UTD Unscripted Andrei Kanchelskis on 1994 derby hat trick v Man City

Then we scored our first goal. I had the ball on the right, I looked up and saw Eric with some space in front of him, so I did the obvious thing and passed the ball to him. Eric was great. He was special, different, unbelievable. He played for other clubs before he came to England, he played for one season at Leeds, but for me he is a Manchester United player. Not a France player, not a player for any other club, just a United player. He was so special for United. His first touch was always perfect, and that night he brought down my pass with his right foot perfectly. His second touch was great too: he smashed it into the net for a great goal and thanked me for the assist.

Next, he assisted me for our second goal. That was an even better way of saying thank you! He passed it to me inside the City area, I tried to hit the ball diagonally across goal but my shot had a bit of a deflection, tricked the goalkeeper and rolled into the net at the near post. It didn’t matter where it went in or that I was a little bit lucky because sometimes in games, in life, you need a little bit of luck. It was so important for me, for the team and also for the game because City stopped playing at that point. When the score went to 2-0 just before half-time, that was the end of the game.

In the dressing room, the big boss made sure we kept going. He told us: “No relaxing, be more aggressive, we play for the fans.” That’s what we did in the second half and we really enjoyed ourselves. No problems, no players annoyed with anything, we just knew we were playing well in a big game with our rivals and so we enjoyed it.

Early in the second half, I scored again. This time, my first shot was saved, but the ball came back to me and I put it in the empty net. Maybe a little bit lucky again, but sometimes you have those nights where everything seems to work for you. The same happened with our fourth goal – Roy Keane went on an excellent run on the right side, crossed in for Mark Hughes and his shot was blocked but he just scored with his second shot. It all happened so quickly, it was what I would call a typical United goal at that time: it was all happening so fast that other teams couldn’t stop it.