United crush sorry Stoke

Ronaldo took just three minutes to reach his personal milestone with a trademark free-kick and rounded off United's biggest win of the season in similar fashion at the end.

In between Michael Carrick and Dimitar Berbatov found the net, with Danny Welbeck scoring on his debut.

Ronaldo made the breakthrough after just three minutes when Amdy Faye clattered into Carlos Tevez to provide the Portugal winger with a free-kick to line-up.

Thomas Sorensen's fumbling effort to save meant the goal was not quite in the class of his strike against Portsmouth last season but for a landmark 100 it was not too bad.

Ronaldo, Park Ji-Sung and Carlos Tevez all had chances to score a second but it was not until Carrick collected Ronaldo's pass in first-half stoppage time and somehow thundered a shot through a crowd of Stoke bodies that United doubled their lead.

Stoke's hopes were extinguished straight after the restart as slack defending allowed Berbatov to control Tevez's fiercely-driven pass and turn to slam a volley past Sorensen.

From then on Ronaldo should have been able to cut the defence to shreds but with the the red mist descending after being on the end of numerous challenges - not all of them given as fouls - he failed to take advantage.

He took a swing at Faye which, remarkably, he got away with, although it did end up in a face-to-face confrontation with the former Portsmouth man as the niggling went on.

Welbeck came on as a substitute and crashed home the fourth in impressive fashion from 20 yards before Ronaldo powered home another free-kick.