"In a European sense it is my greatest night here. You never expect a scoreline like 7-1. But saying that the quality of our game was so high that once we scored two or three you felt we were going to do something big here.

"I think it was a special night. Hopefully it's not a one-off, but certainly the number of goals and the quality of them, it's difficult to think you are going to get that again," said Ferguson.

United were down by one goal after their 2-1 defeat at Roma and weren't quiet comfortable at the beginning of the game. But after they had a magnificent response and scored three goals in only 7 minutes to finish up the 90 minutes with 7 goals to one.

"I just think the early goal was difficult for Roma because it gave us the advantage and put them on the back foot. It gave us the confidence to get at them and the speed of our play caused them a lot of problems after that "added the Scots.

The Reds had conceded successive defeats against Roma and Portsmouth last weed and were hit by several absences like Gary Neville, Paul Scholes and Louis Saha. Although, they silenced all the critics and produced their best ever European display.

"I said some months ago that the key to success at our club are the ones sitting on the bench. The players that have come in have responded to the challenge and I don't think they have looked out of place. We looked like men tonight. That is the kind of quality we have. It is difficult to lose two games at a club like this but we are able to respond to that pressure."

On the other hand Roma coach Luciano Spalletti was shocked by the result and haven't much to explain it.

"No-one imagined this performance, we suffered from a lack of experience.

"The first goal changed the face of the game. We lost our shape and played into their hands. We have played many good matches this season but we got it badly wrong tonight.

"We made a lot of mistakes and got punished heavily for them. We ended up chasing the game."

Roma's defeat was the heaviest suffered by an Italian side since Juventus lost 7-0 against Vienna in 1958.