Ole Gunnar Solskjaer may not have scored the goals Alan Shearer would have done at Manchester United, but for a tenth of the price he will still go down as one of their best-ever signings.
Solskjaer scored 126 goals in 366 appearances for United, but that doesn’t go nearly far enough in explaining his legacy at Old Trafford.
Of those 366 appearances, 150 were made as a substitute. And of those 126 goals, 33 came in the last 15 minutes, including one in particular that will go down in history. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is a Manchester United legend – and he cost just £1.5million.
The problem
In the summer of 1996, United needed a new striker.
That was nothing new. United hadn’t boasted a golden boot winner since George Best in 1968, and though they had won three of the first four Premier League titles, they had yet to break the two-goal-per-game barrier.
Ferguson was in charge for 21 Premier League seasons; four of his worst eight seasons for goals came in the years 1992-1996.
Eric Cantona, Mark Hughes, and Brian McClair offered guile, power, and work rate, but their rates of return were not up there with the best in the country, with the trio’s goals-per-game average over their time at Old Trafford coming out at 0.31 (Cantona was the best of the three with 0.45).
By comparison, the country’s best striker at the time, Alan Shearer, scored at a rate of 0.81 goals per game for Blackburn Rovers.
Signing Andy Cole in January 1995 certainly helped, but Hughes would leave for Chelsea later that year and McClair dropped into a deeper midfield role, leaving Cantona and Cole as the club’s only recognised forwards.
Paul Scholes deputised in the position when needed, but it was clear that his future lay in midfield.
Cantona turned 30 in May 1996 (and would go on to retire the following summer), and Cole had an absolute shocker of a season in 1995-96, with the ultimate confidence striker looking barely able to keep his head in the game for long stretches of the season.
United were desperate for a goalscorer.
The market
Shearer was United’s prime transfer target after capping four incredible seasons for Blackburn by winning the Euro 96 Golden Boot, but he proved elusive in the face of rival interest from his hometown club, Newcastle, who he would eventually join for a world record fee of £15million.
The previous year’s Bosman ruling opened up squad places for overseas players, however, allowing United to join the rest of the division in looking…
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