Andy Cole was an erratic finisher at times, but his all round game developed to an exceptional level, would say by 2000 he was probably the best all round striker in the league. His movement was incredible, and he had great acceleration to get away from defenders, add that to exceptional agility and the ability to gets shots off with little backlift and you had a guy who created so many chances for himself. Close to a perfect build for a striker as well, lean, agile but explosive and strong at the same time.
His all round game was so underrated, always felt that replacing Cole with RVN meant a drop off in the link up play, lay offs and interplay, made Utd a lot more predictable. Cole always had those abilities in his game, you can see it at Newcastle in flashes but at Utd he became an easy guy for his partner to play with, outside of Cantona, and there was no selfishness there, was always prepared to make the extra pass, and put the team first, which was the great strength of that era of Utd, no-one was looking to accumulate stats as is the trend today.