Christian Eriksen can raise Manchester United spirits just like Eric Cantona 30 years ago

Three decades ago Manchester United made a surprise signing that, as it turned out, was to alter the club’s history.

It would genuinely shape the formative years of what was then a young, newly formed competition called the Premier League. It would endorse a great manager’s reputation for bold, instinctive, inspired judgements.

The player acquired was Eric Cantona, then aged 26 but with several clubs already on his CV and a chequered disciplinary record. He was recruited from Leeds United, his seventh employer, where he had played an important role in delivering the 1992 league title.

Cantona’s relationship with Howard Wilkinson, the then Leeds manager, had turned difficult and when a conversation about another proposed transfer between executives of Leeds and Manchester United touched, almost at random, on to the subject of Cantona’s availability, United’s manager Alex Ferguson was taken aback to learn the Frenchman might be for sale. He urged an immediate bid.

The rest is history. In the next five years Cantona would be an emblematic figurehead for a series of domestic triumphs that established United as the dominant force in English football after decades in which they had been only part of a chasing pack.

The seemingly haphazard path that took Cantona from erratic, restless talent to enduring hero of Old Trafford is unlike most modern transfers in elite football because the business has grown so much since, the sums are much higher – Cantona cost United around £1 million – and the buffer zones between clubs negotiating deals is filled with more intermediaries.

Players’ career trajectories are more streamlined, too, and so are the rules around how frequently a player can change employers. Between December 1991 and the