There were too many negatives

With his dad watching, young Ferguson took a leaf out of his book and decided to blast the referee, picking out anything that had gone against his team but very conveniently forgetting that Preston's first goal was handball and that another handball should have given us a penalty with just under a quarter of an hour remaining.

But let's not allow the truth to get in the way of a ranting Fergie shall we, not after he's all but accused a referee of cheating. "The referee has done as much as he can to win the game for Burnley," he said after the final whistle.

"The sending off was a disgrace. Never in my twenty years in football have I see a sending off for that. I don't know if he realised he'd already booked Billy, but he warned him and then sent him off.

"The tackle on Joshua King by Danny Fox was a disgrace and he could have a broken ankle. There was a foul on Sean St. Ledger for the fourth goal but that's what happens when you get referees who aren't good enough."

"The injuries also killed us today," he added. "King has gone for an x-ray. We think there is a break for Matty James and he has gone for an x-ray too, while Paul Coutts pulled his groin in the first half. We don't know for certain they are broken ankles, but Matty heard a crack.

"We had been in control of the game before the injuries and I was disappointed it was only two at half time. I felt that footballing wise there was only one team trying to play, they just went and lumped it and unfortunately for us it got them some success.

"We controlled the game for 75 minutes. We were the only team who played any football. We were in complete control of the game at 3-1. I was looking for more goals, but then the sending off changed things.

"Having said that, even with ten men, you don't expect to lose three goals. Iwelumo's second goal was a hell of a finish to get them back in the game, but we were by far the better team tonight.

Brian Laws was quick to admit that the Clarets were very fortunate to get anything and wasn't happy at all with the overall performance. "I haven't been involved in many games like that," he admitted.

"It was great for the spectators but from a manager's point of view it was disappointing. There were too many negatives but we will certainly take the big positive of winning the game and hopefully that will be something we will look back on and thing that might have been the catalyst for us to go on and do well.

"It's not how you start, it's how you finish and what a finish it was. I've not seen that for a long time. It may be the lift the club needs and shows the morale that we have within the camp and the belief that we can go on and still push forward, even though at 3-1 in the last fifteen minutes may players would have had their heads down and accepted the result.

"I have got to give them great credit for that, although there is the damaging side of it that was that the first half performance was not up to the standard I require. I think we did get out of jail, I'm not kidding myself, but another big positive is that we have kept our home form intact.

"That's three wins out of three which is fantastic, and maybe it will send out a message that we won't give in."

Laws certainly accepted that the sending off, which he agreed was harsh, played a big part and said: "It seemed to give us the momentum and once we got that goal I could see us equalising, although I wasn't sure we would get a winner. I thought time was going to run out for us.

"The introduction of some fresh legs helped and to finish the game the way we did was incredible."