YOU can't keep a good man down – and in the world of speedway they don't come much better than Hans Andersen.

The Panthers hero answered his critics in the best possible fashion with a splendid 17-point individual performance last night as the city side came up short in Manchester.

Andersen has looked a pale shadow of his brilliant best at times this season, a point highlighted by a seriously poor showing at Ipswich last Thursday.

It was a third less-than-convincing display at his former base and, coupled with a couple of nightmare visits to Wolverhampton, had plenty wondering whether Andersen was going downhill.

In fact even his own team manager Trevor Swales was among them after making a damning assessment of his Ipswich display – the first time this man had felt the need to publicly criticise his captain.

But Andersen responded in the only way he knows how at Kirkmanshulme Lane last night by winning in style, upstaging the sport's man of the moment Jason Crump and proving correct the old cliché that form is temporary and class is permanent.

Crump might have stormed to glory in the British GP on Saturday night and rocketed to maximums in his previous four Elite League outings, but he had no answer to Andersen.

Andersen comfortably defeated Crump in all three of their meetings – taking victories in the first and 13th heats while coming home second in the finale with the Australian a further place back.

"People can criticise me if they like, but the fact is that we would have lost at Ipswich even if I had been better," said Andersen.

"It was a night when I tried some new equipment and it didn't work out as I wanted, but there were more positives to take from the GP and now I'm delighted to have beaten a rider of Jason's class three times around his own track."

Panthers repeated their Thursday feat by only trailing the Aces by six points after the opening eight heats.

But, just as in Suffolk last week, things rapidly went downhill as the concession of back-to-back 5-1s turned a potentially match-winning position into a damage limitation operation.

In the end Panthers were defeated by 11 points and the main reason for that was the below-par performances of Andersen's main sources of back-up – fellow heat leaders Kenneth Bjerre and Danny King.

Former Belle Vue man Bjerre is visibly troubled by the broken thigh he sustained last month and doesn't appear to be anywhere near full fitness judging by the struggles he endured on his former home track.

The Dane was a major disappointment – aside from a seventh heat success – as he could only collect 4+1 points.