I demanded to leave Manchester United even though they asked me to stay - I made a massive mistake

When Manchester United signed Andrei Kanchelskis in March 1991 for £650,000, not much was known about the Russian, although the legendary Sir Alex Ferguson had watched a video of him playing for Russia's U21s and the transfer was deemed a calculated risk.

The transfer talks between Shakhtar Donetsk and United were secret, though, so much so that when Kanchelskis arrived in Manchester he didn't know which North West club he was joining, but he would eventually become a cult hero at Old Trafford.

After four years spent at United between 1991 and 1995, Kanchelskis made his exit having won two Premier League titles, the League Cup, the FA Cup and the European Super Cup, but he certainly didn't leave for pastures new quietly.

His time at the club was marred by unsavoury incidents, from Kanchelskis refusing to play to his agent attempting to gift Ferguson a box with £40,000 in cash as his thanks for offering his client a new contract, a deal that had been made with a 'secret' clause.

This is the story of the Flying Russian's years at Manchester United.

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Kanchelskis was born in Kirovohrad, Ukraine in the Soviet Union to a Lithuanian father and a Russian mother, starting his career at Dynamo Kyiv in 1988 before moving to Shakhtar Donetsk in 1990, where he would play for one season before United came calling.

Interestingly, though, upon his arrival from Shakhtar, Kanchelskis explained he didn't know which Manchester club he was joining.

"There wasn’t a lot of information about English football when I was younger," Kanchelskis recalled to FourFourTwo.

"Of course I knew about Manchester United – Denis Law, Bobby Charlton, Matt Busby and George Best – but in ’91 most people spoke only about Liverpool because