Manchester United Goals and Assists (1987/88-today)

==============1988-89==============


This was a disappointing season, which saw us finishing in 11th place. The title race itself was extremely close, with Arsenal claiming the title in 91st minute of last game, against direct competition for the title, Liverpool.

6th round of FA Cup and 3rd round of League Cup for us as well.

Almost signed Gascoigne, but he decided to go to Tottenham instead. We got Mark Hughes back though, and he had an excellent season getting Player of the Year award. Jim Leighton was also an addition, goalkeeper that allowed only 35 goals in the league season, with 15 clean sheets. Fergie also bought 17-year old Lee Sharpe, and gave a debut to another youngling, 19-year old Mark Robins who was with us since 1986.



Player focus

Mark Hughes

When I was watching and re-watching all those United goals for this project, the thought I had in mind seeing Mark Hughes' goals was "jeez, just how hard was that!". Never an extremely prolific scorer, but you'll remember his goals. After United played for Chelsea among others, and once playing career was finished, jumped into coaching. Currently manager of mighty Stoke City.





Some of his beauties in first ever highlight video featuring non-crap music.


==============1989-90==============


Another disappointing league finish, this time 13th, but who cares! WE WON A TROPHY! First one in an amazing career of Sir Alex Ferguson, FA Cup. Heroes -- Mark Robins and Lee Martin. First one not only for his winning goal against Oldham in semi-final replay, but also for a winning goal against Nottingham Forest earlier in the Cup. Apparently, some reporters speculated that defeat then might've been too much for the board who'd be under lots of pressure to release Fergie. As said, speculations, but if there's a bit of truth in it...thanks a bunch, Robins! (if anyone has some more info about that, would love to know it, please share)

League Cup again 3rd round reached.

Also, we were also almost sold for half a Carroll, actually, a whole Downing, right before the start of season.

Plenty of new signings. Gary Pallister, who'll form an immense partnership with Steve Bruce. Paul Ince and Neil Webb, fellow midfielders, with winger Danny Wallace and the one and only Mike Phelan.



Notable departures



Players focus

Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister



Man.

Bruce is currently manager of Hull, while I'm not sure what's Pallister's been doing lately.

==============1990-91==============


Movin' on up. Finished the league in 6th place, even after a deduction of one point for a brawl. Ok, champions that season, Arsenal got a deduction of two points for the same brawl...and still finished 24 points ahead! Our time will come, gunners, no worries. Here's the "brawl" btw...



After a fantastic FA Cup last season, this time we fell in the third round, but almost won the League Cup. Sheffield Wednesday with Ron Atkinson beat United in the final unfortunately. Still, the season ended on a high. UEFA ban on all English clubs ended, and as the winners of FA Cup last season we were able to play in Cup Winners Cup. First season back in Europe was excellent, Pécsi Munkás, Wrexham, Montpellier, Legia Warsaw and finally Barcelona fell against the mighty Reds.

Notable signings were Dennis Irwin, a full back who could play either on the right or on the left, with a fantastic set piece execution skills, be it free kicks, penalties or corners. Also Les Sealey, goalkeeper who got a permanent contract after already being in United on loan. Though, he left after just one season...maybe for the better, as Big Dane joined next season.

Oh yeah, forgot that guy, Ryan Giggs. Got a professional contract, and a debut in this season.



Notable departures



Player focus

Dennis Irwin

Best ever SAF's signing? At least that's the saying. Nevertheless, he WAS an amazing signing, integral part of 7 times England champion, winner of 3 FA Cups, 1 League Cup, 4 Charity Shields, Champions League and Cup Winners Cup winner, plus he added also Intercontinental and Super Cup in his list of honours. We need more Dennis Irwin groupies.

==============1991-92==============

We were involved in a fierce battle for championship with Leeds United. On April 18th we were still in first place, with 75 points and four games left to play, while Leeds were behind by two points and had three more games to play. But, as it happened, we lost our next three games, including one against the already relegated West Ham United, while they have won all of theirs. At the end, four points was the difference. We'll never win anything with this squad!

Well, save for League Cup. In the final on Wembley we beat Nottingham Forrest. They'll have the last laugh though, as eight days later, they featured in one of the three mentioned losses above.

In FA Cup we got only to round 4 (still, beat Leeds in 3rd), and in Europe, Cup Winners Cup, Atletico Madrid eliminated us in second round (Athinaikos was the opponent in first round).

With League Cup we have won a trophy for a third season in a row, while Gary Pallister and Ryan Giggs won PFA Players' Player of the Year and Young Player of the Year, replicating the success of Mark Hughes and Lee Sharpe from previous season.

Biggest signing of the season was definitely Peter Schmeichel, "bargain of the century". He'll stay with United for eight years, with his final game being a Champions League triumph against Bayern Munich. Also signed was Paul Parker, right back, who spent five seasons with United. These days can be seen hatin' on Waybe Rooney.

Another player was "new" this season, Ukranian sensation Andrei Kanchelskis. Though, he was signed in latter half of previous season, and even actually played in next to last game of the season. But in this one he had a "proper" debut.



Notable departures



Player focus



Ryan Giggs

This whole project started when I saw the post claiming that Giggs had astonishing 284 assists in his career. Surely, that's hogwash, with his goals, how could he be directly responsible for almost 25% of all United goals? Ridiculous. 100-150 at most I'd say. Didn't help that first two seasons I watched and counted the stats were 1992-93 and 1998-99. He had 5 and 7 in those.

Needless to say, I was dead wrong.



What an astonishing career for the most decorated player in MUFC & English football history. I'd say he was the best United player ever. It was popular on Cafe to say that Giggs never reached the highs Bale did for instance. I'll never agree with that. Especially after watching and re-watching his career in the past month or so. Skilled and fast, a real menace to opponents. And he did it for 20+ seasons.

In the sea of highlight videos, this one really isn't all that bad. More goals oriented though. He was much more than just that.

==============1992-93==============

And finally, the long wait is over.

In the inaugural season of Premier League, Manchester United fought of Aston Villa, Blackburn and Norwich city, to claim the first league title in 26 years. Did it in style, by not losing in last two months, and winning last seven games. One of the most memorable games from that period was against Sheffield Wednesday, where Steve Bruce had two fantastic headers in last few minutes which won the game and put us back in first place in the league. At the end we finished with 10 more points than runner-ups Aston Villa.

Cup runs weren't as successful. Round 5 in FA Cup, round 3 in League cup, and first round exit against Torpedo Moscow in UEFA Cup on penalties, after goalless 180 minutes (and I guess 30 more extra time).

Notable signings of the season were Dion Dublin from Cambridge United and Eric Cantona from Leeds United. Dublin didn't have a great United career as couple of weeks after his debut, he suffered a broken leg which sidelined him for six months. After recovery, United already signed Cantona, who established nice partnership with Hughes in front, so Dublin didn't play as much. All in all, two seasons with just 17 appearances. He did quite well for Coventry and Villa afterwards though.

We'll talk about King Cantona a bit later.



Notable departures



Player focus



Eric Cantona

Spent just five years at the club before his shock retirement in 1997, but only few United fans wouldn't call him a club legend. Catalyst of our early success and a great leader. Though, not that there weren't problems...but we all know about his long ban from football, no need to post again about it.



Here's 15 minutes of Cantona.

==============1993-94==============

Once you get the taste for it...

Massive domestic success followed title winning 92-93 season. League, FA Cup and Charity Shield were won, and we've reached the final of the League Cup, only to be stopped by Aston Villa. Reached only the second round of European Cup though, where Galatasaray went through on away goals.

Only signing of the season (but what a signing!) was future captain, Roy Keane. Joined us for a record fee od 3.75 million pounds from Nottingham Forest.



Notable departures



Player focus

Roy Keane

Dominating midfielder immidiately had an impact upon his arrival by scoring or providing 22 goals in his first season. But you don't think about stats when you think about Roy Keane. You think about his aggressiveness and leadership which helped him excel as a team captain from 1997 (Eric Cantona's retirement) all the way to 2005 when he left the club. Spent some time at Celtic before his own retirement. After playing career he went into managerial waters, and is currently an assistant coach to Paul Lambert in Aston Villa. Also, can be seen as a pundit on ITV occasionally.

==============1994-95==============

A bit of a miserable end to this season. We were in it for both the league and FA Cup, but first we failed to win at West Ham United (again them - if we won both times, who knows, might've been a 4th title in a row --- then again, would we have seen then the "can't win with the kids" season?), making Blackburn the champions, and then in the FA Cup finals, we succumbed to Everton at Wembley 0-1.

Beginning of the season wasn't great as well. First we lost Captain Marvel, Bryan Robson, who went to Middlesbrough to manage and play for them. Clayton Blackmore also left after missing whole 1993-94 season, and finally Mike Phelan left.

League Cup saw us reach only round 3, and in an inaugural year of the Champions League, we were 3rd in the group, behind Barcelona and IFK Göteborg who actually headed the group. That's the time when I started supporting United. Glory hunting at its best, saw the 2-2 game with Barcelona, Sharpe's backheel, and just knew that's it.

David May was the only signing at the beginning of the season, brought to be an eventual replacement for Steve Bruce. Certain Andrew Cole joined as well, but later, in January. Good timing as couple of weeks later Cantona had a infamous bust-up with the racist Crystal Palace fan.



Notable departures



Players focus

Lee Sharpe
Andrei Kanchelskis
Paul Ince

==============1995-96==============

If only RedCafe existed in 1995. Would love to read opinions of then-Caftards on the first day of season, 1-3 loss at Villa. Fergie got rid of Paul Ince, Mark Hughes and Andrei Kanchelskis before the season (Kanchelskis tiny bit after the start actually), promoted bunch of kids which brought infamous quip from Hansen (believe it was actually exactly after that loss vs Villa), bought absolutely noone while captain, Eric Cantona was stil banned from playing.

Sack Fergie, sell Cantona?

Kids didn't wait long to ease the mind of many fans. Next ten games brought 26 points, but another 'crisis' came pre-Christmas, as we had five winless games in a row. Newcastle was running away with 10 points more (think they had 12 at some point), but luckily, next game was against them, 2-0 win, so seven points then. Since January 13th we went on a 10-2-0 run with another win against Newcastle in the run-in that brought us to just one point behind them, only to win against Arsenal on March 20th to climb to top. And there we stayed until the end of season.

Cantona, after returning from his ban in October, was immense. And he almost left the club, even handing the transfer request, because he was frustrated with the ban. Request was denied, and Sir Alex convinced him to stay. Phew! Won the FWA Player of the Year that season as well.

Oh yeah, we also won the FA Cup! Liverpool was the loser in the Wembley final.

League Cup of that year was reminiscented quite often recently, after the embarrassing 0-4 loss against MK Dons. We lost in 1995-96 at home 0-3 against York City! What exactly happened there? Almost came through in the second leg, but managed only 3-1 win. UEFA cup saw us pitted against Rotor Volgograd, two draws, 0-0 there, 2-2 at Old Trafford and the Russians went to second round.




Notable departures



Player focus

Paul Scholes



"Two trees, one ball."

The perfect midfielder.