Blackburn Rovers 7 Sheffield Wednesday 2 - Peter White's big match verdict

OKAY, stand up the man who said at the start of the season that the biggest concern surrounding Blackburn Rovers' prospects was whether they had enough goal power.

Guilty! Mind you, I'm in the dock along with many others charged with bucking the national trend by flopping our GCSE, if there was one, in football predictions.

Who's going to get the goals was the question we asked - at length.

The answer, along with a large slice of humble pie for yours truly and the rest, has come from Kevin Gallacher, Chris Sutton, Jason Wilcox, Lars Bohinen et al.

And, after last night's sensational seven-goal slaughter of Sheffield Wednesday, the only regret, in a purely football sense, was that Stuart Ripley did not get the goal he so richly deserved for an inspirational performance.

This was Rippers back to his absolute peak and how the fans saluted his storming show.

They were willing him to get the goal which has eluded him for so long but the winger needn't worry.

Put on a few more displays like last night and he need never score again. They'll still erect a statue to "Super Stu" on the Boulevard.

On the opposite flank, Jason Wilcox too neared perfection - though for only an hour before he had to succumb to an injury.

With the wingers flying, the strikers wreaking havoc in a shambles of a Sheffield defence and midfield, as always, grafting away there was only going to be one winner from the moment the game began. If you look at things in the cold light of day - and that's what they pay me to do - there were one or two question marks defensively.

But no-one's going to quibble about that as Rovers ran riot.

Kevin Gallacher summed it up perfectly when he said afterwards: "When a team is flying as we were flying tonight, it doesn't matter how many they are going to score because we feel we are going to score some more."

That certainly reflected the feelings of the fans, though I doubt Roy Hodgson, rapidly coming over as a realist and a very practical manager, will see it quite like that.

He will be looking for a clean sheet next time out - and, of course, a few goals as well.

Sky TV must have trebled their sales of satellite dishes after last night's extravaganza. For it truly was the game which had everything.

It was only a great pity that some of the ingredients were unwanted.

Goalkeeper John Filan, who has made such a tremendous impression in a matter of weeks, was sadly taken to hospital after a challenge by Wayne Collins.

One manager cried foul, the other defended his player. You pay your money and take your choice, the fans made up their minds but none of that helped Filan. Tim Flowers, admitting he was only 60 or 70 per cent fit was a surprise substitute but he still rose to the occasion to make a super save and Hodgson admitted that 7-2 was far better than 7-3 where he was concerned. The other unsavoury moment concerned wee Italian wizard Benito Carbone, whose 60th minute red card for an off-the-ball incident against Kevin Gallacher was the right punishment but tarnished his excellent display which was light years away from that of his colleagues.

Behind the scenes, there was anguish for Filan but, around the ground, the scenes were simply of celebration as Rovers romped to their biggest win for nearly two years, when Nottingham Forest also had seven slammed past them.

Rovers were simply unstoppable as an attacking force.

They knocked the ball around with confidence, hunted in packs when the opposition had the ball and their finishing was magnificent.

If only Ripley could have the slice of luck he needs to get on the scoresheet.

I don't think I have ever witnessed an opening 24 minutes as we saw last night. It produced five Rovers goals plus a creditable reply for the Owls and, with the first period only just half over, the visitors didn't know whether it was Saturday, Monday, or they were Wednesday.

After 33 minutes and 5-1 down they even sent on another centre back to try to maintain a modicum of respectability. They did that, especially after the interval when a few tackles started flying. But it was all over by then with Rovers' magnificent seven looking like this:

3 mins: Ripley's left wing corner is met by a flashing near-post header from Gallacher, 1-0.

6 mins: Gallacher takes a perfect through ball from Wilcox in his stride to shoot inside the keeper's left-hand post.

10 mins: Ripley collects Sutton's pass, beats his man and the cross is headed past his own keeper by Graham Hyde.

20 mins: A great cross by Gallacher is helped on by Sutton and Wilcox brilliantly shuffles the ball away from a defender to place a deliberate shot in by the far post. "Quick feet" said one fan, a perfect description.

24 mins: Ian Pearce's brilliant ball to Wilcox is knocked inside to Sutton who bends a real corker into the keeper's top left-hand corner from just inside the box.

52 mins: Wilcox and Gallacher set up Lars Bohinen for a cracking drive from 10 yards.

74 mins: Yet another superb Ripley run and cross picks out Sutton to tap in from barn-door range.

It was almost incidental that Wednesday pulled back to 2-1 in the seventh minute with a neatly-worked goal when Paolo Di Canio's far post cross caught out Rovers. Guy Whittingham headed back and Carbone finished well from the corner of the six-yard box.

Carbone also made it 5-2 on 47 minutes with a real screamer, in off the crossbar from around 30 yards.

But he then blotted his copybook, while Rovers got a gold star.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.