Manchester United’s transfer history has taken a bit of a hit after Sir Alex Ferguson and David Gill departed together in 2013.
Before their departure, the tandem worked together to bring in some of the most iconic players and the structure on the pitch under Sir Alex Ferguson empowered them to play their best football.
There were more hits than misses and it led to Manchester United becoming a powerhouse in English football.
Even among that list of legends, Gary Neville says there is one “massive” Manchester United transfer that forever changed the course of history at Old Trafford.
Gary Neville’s most influential transfer
Having spent his whole career at Old Trafford, and playing in multiple iterations of a great United side, Neville is arguably best placed to make a comment on the history of the club.
It can be argued that United’s spell of sustained powerhouse-level success only started when the Class of ’92 was promoted to the first team.
However, Neville argues that it wasn’t them, but a transfer made close to that time that changed the course of history at United.
Speaking on his YouTube channel The Overlap, Neville named Eric Cantona as the most transformative signing in United history due to his personality, swagger, and how he always found himself deciding games for the club. Jamie Carragher said he ‘changed the course of history’ at Old Trafford and Neville concurred.
Neville said: “It was a massive, massive transfer. I still say to this day that the biggest moment in Manchester United’s modern history was winning the league that season. Everything turned.
“I don’t name Cantona as a player among top three players but I remember in the first season when we won the league, he was scoring winning goals.
“That season he was the most influential player I’ve ever seen in a season in winning the league. Most influential outfield performance ever.”
The Eric Cantona effect
It’s not the first time that a person related to Manchester United has waxed lyrical about the mercurial Frenchman’s impact at Old Trafford.
Cantona is widely regarded as the culture-setter of the era United would go on to dominate, built upon the foundation of youth but sprinkled in with the swagger of Cantona.
As Neville says, Cantona is unlikely to be remembered in the same breath as the likes of, say Cristiano Ronaldo or George Best when it comes to pure individual player quality, but his impact is felt by those who were with him in those days.
The intangibles he brought to the dressing room that was learning how to win, and the decisive goals he brought to the pitch which made the team win was a combo that has etched Cantona in United’s history forever.
Truly the ‘massive’ transfer that set Sir Alex Ferguson’s United on a path to domination they wouldn’t veer from the next two decades.
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