Former Manchester United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel explained how Eric Cantona turned the club into title challengers.
United won the first Premier League in 1993 and they did it with the assistance of Cantona, who joined from Leeds United - the previous season’s First Division winners.
Alex Ferguson had first wanted to sign David Hirst from Sheffield Wednesday, and famously signed Cantona after rebuffing an approach from Leeds’ manager Howard Wilkinson for full-back Denis Irwin.
Cantona would arrive and inspire United to the league as part of a run of four league titles in five years for the Frenchman - with the only year he failed to land a league trophy the season he was banned for nine months due to reacting to a Crystal Palace fan who was abusing him from the sidelines.
The talisman would be present from United’s first title-winning side to the team that was defined by the Class of ‘92. Without Cantona - but with Schmeichel - they would go on to win the treble in 1999.
Schmeichel told William Hill how Cantona revolutionised the team.
He said: “If you think about the team we had when he arrived, Mark Hughes didn’t really have anyone else up front with him. We had Lee Sharp and Ryan Giggs on the left and Andrei Kanchelskis on the right; it was very much a wide-playing team, getting into positions wide and crossing the ball in.
“Sir Alex [Ferguson] felt like in order to break that up, he needed something else that wasn’t so ‘English’ in its setup, he needed more play to come through the middle. I’m sure he was looking at Cantona when he was at Leeds, thinking ‘I want this player.’
“All of a sudden, we have a completely different way of playing alongside what we have already shown to be our strengths – we were quick to turn the game around. We already had the pace on the wings and the understanding from the strikers to get into the right positions for the crosses, but suddenly we had this guy who could play little one-twos and keep the ball however you played it to him – straight away he came in and changed everything.”
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