Sir Alex Ferguson made seven changes to the side who beat Bursaspor in the Champions League midweek, with Nemanja Vidic, Patrice Evra, Luis Nani and Darren Fletcher all keeping their places. Gary Neville started, which was his 600th appearance for the club. With all the height in the Stoke City team, John O’Shea replaced Evra in defence, with the Frenchman starting as a left winger.
The start of the game was end-to-end with both teams looking to put pressure on the other team. United were creating chances and looked dangerous on the break. It was the away side who took the lead in the 23rd minute with a quality goal from Hernandez. Nani’s cross in from the right was headed back across goal by Vidic and Hernandez was there to put the ball into the back of the net with the back of his head, with his back to goal.
With a yellow card already to his name, Neville should have been shown a red before half time. His yellow card was a soft one after a challenge on Matthew Etherington but he slid in on Etherington again minutes later, which should have seen him being shown a second yellow. It came to no surprise that Neville was replaced immediately after the break, with Wes Brown coming on to replace him.
Stoke had themselves an equaliser with less than 10 minutes remaining, it looked like Man United had thrown away yet another lead. Paul Scholes passed the ball straight to Kenwyne Jones, the ball was played to Tuncay Sanli and his stunning left-footed shot flew straight into the top corner of the goal.
Man United’s response to the goal was to go up the other end with four minutes remaining and score the winner. Stoke failed to clear Evra’s shot, Hernandez was there to poke the ball past Thomas Sorensen.
Hernandez will quite rightly pick up a lot of plaudits but Vidic had a very solid performance in United’s defence. Dimitar Berbatov had a good game alongside Hernandez with some great touches. Hopefully United can now build on this first league away win of the season.
