After a week off for domestic cup involvements, United returned to league action on 27 January with an away fixture at West Bromwich Albion. Despite having several players out through injury, Alex Ferguson was able to name a fairly strong starting XI, including a fit-again Rio Ferdinand, starting his first match since the 2008 FIFA Club World Cup Final in December. Both sides started the match in an attacking mindset, with United posing the slightly greater threat, and it was they who opened the scoring in the 22nd minute through Dimitar Berbatov; the Bulgarian exchanged passes with Michael Carrick before firing across Scott Carson into the far corner of the West Brom goal. Shortly before half-time, the Baggies were reduced to ten men when Paul Robinson was shown a straight red card for an innocuous-looking foul on Park Ji-sung. Their misery was compounded with almost the last kick of the half as Carson failed to hang on to a Ryan Giggs free kick, dropping the ball at the feet of Carlos Tevez, who lashed it home with his left foot. Nemanja Vidić added a third on the hour mark with a header from Giggs' corner, before Giggs set up another for Cristiano Ronaldo five minutes later. Ronaldo completed the scoring in the 73rd minute, shooting through Carson's legs after being put through by Berbatov, despite the West Brom players' protests that both Berbatov and Ronaldo had been offside during the build-up to the goal. The win took United three points clear of Liverpool, who were not to play until the following day, but the fact that they kept a clean sheet meant that they set a new Premier League record for consecutive clean sheets – with 11 – while Edwin van der Sar had not conceded in 1,032 minutes of football, surpassing Petr Čech's record of 1,025 minutes, set during the 2003–04 season.