Manchester United have used Sir Alex Ferguson's goalkeeper plan with Andre Onana

Andre Onana is the same age Peter Schmeichel was when he joined Manchester United in 1991. Though hardly a spring chicken, the 27-year-old Schmeichel was an unknown quantity outside Denmark.

Ferguson had tried to sign Schmeichel two years earlier but balked at the fee Brondby demanded. The goalkeeping coach, Alan Hodgkinson, was sent to watch Schmeichel across six games at club and international level and reported back that the Dane was the best 'keeper in Europe.

Hodgkinson described Schmeichel as "king-sized" and predicted he would be an "absolute star" at United. Ferguson bought Schmeichel for £505,000 and he was the No.1 in his first two great sides in the Nineties.

Ferguson later recalled Schmeichel "squealed like a pig" over the physical nature of Wimbledon's Jurassic tactics. Ferguson resorted to that defence mechanism after David de Gea's Premier League debut at West Brom.

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De Gea let Shane Long's tame shot trickle under him; an error not dissimilar to Ilkay Gundogan's FA Cup final winner. In the second half, De Gea was visibly uncomfortable at set-pieces and softened up by the imposing Paul Scharner.

De Gea was only 20 and there was always an element of risk in Ferguson plumping for a goalkeeper so inexperienced his senior career had amounted to 18 months of regular football at Atletico Madrid. There were some troubling troughs amid the peaks in De Gea's first 18 months at United but he proved to be Ferguson's last great signing.

Schmeichel sidled over to De Gea on the Wembley pitch after the Cup final in June. Their exchange appeared to be cordial from a distance but Schmeichel, so unctuous in his punditry he refers to United as "we", had