Debut: 2-0 win vs West Ham United, September 24th 1988
League Record: 160 games (+33 as sub), 21 goals
Sold to: Leeds United (£4,500,000), summer of 1996
The first time we get to see Fergie's eye for a bargain: for whatever potential Lee Sharpe failed to realise, the fee we paid was peanuts for what he did manage to achieve for us - which turned out to be quite a lot.
Young Sharpe, born with a great name for a winger, was a Brummie lad who had failed to impress Aston Vila (who he supported) and ended up down the English Rivera (ahem) with Torquay United. However, it didn't take long for their manager, the late Cyril Knowles, to put the 16-year-old in the first team. United were soon tipped off and the youngster was on his way back North. Though the plan was for him to spend some time in the reserves, he - still only 17 - was thrown into the first team early into his first season.
Initially, he played most his games at left back - weirdly, a number of matches at the end of 1988/89 have him wearing #3 and Lee Martin (nominally a full back) at #11. He wasn't able to get fully established to earn a medal in our 1990 FA Cup victory, but the next season would see his world change.
He'd not started the season in the team, but a goal in a 3-1 League Cup victory against Liverpool served as notice for what was to come when the tie for the next round came on November 28th 1990. Playing a strong Arsenal side on their own turf, Sharpe run riot, scoring a hat-trick in a 6-2 rout. I remember the night well mainly for the disbelief my nine-year-old felt when my mother told me the score. I was up at a very early hour the next day to watch the highlights from Granada Sport Night and was top dog at school, being the only United fan.
A few days later, he scored the winner in a league game at Everton. Life changed almost overnight for Sharpe, who became a pin-up more likely to be in magazines for teenage girls than the football press. He won a call up to the England team and was awarded the 1991 PFA Young Player of the Year award. Sharpe's game was built around his lightning quick pace and good crossing ability - it was telling how far he had come that Barcelona felt the need to mark him out of the game in the Cup Winners Cup Final. Unfortunately for them, that gave Bryan Robson the room to operate in that he needed to set up our second goal.
That season I can remember him running riot over several unfortunate right-backs, including Mel Sterland of Leeds United, who got such a chasing in both legs of the League Cup semi-final that I don't remember him being the same player again. We'd won the first leg 2-1 at Old Trafford, and the return match saw us fighting a rearguard action in the last minutes as Leeds threw everything at us. I was hiding behind the sofa in nerves, only emerging when Brian Moore screamed "They say he's onside!" as Sharpe legged it on their goal in a killer counterattack, rounding John Lukic, finishing brilliantly and doing the "Sharpe Shuffle" in front of the ecstatic travelling reds.
From such a peak, there was only one way to go: the following season saw a series of injuries and illness set in, allowing some punk kid from Salford to take the #11 shirt. More of him later. Sharpe, meanwhile, had to face ugly rumours that his absence was due to some kind of drug habit, when in reality he'd had to fight a nasty dose of meningitis. The only highlight for him of the season was coming off the bench in the League Cup final victory over Forest.
He still wasn't fit for the start of the first season of the Premier League, in which United hardly started on fire. Making a comeback around Christmas time, he appeared reborn and his tricks on the wing (along with the guile of a certain European gentleman) kick started the season. His great form carried over to the start of the next season (93/94), where he also found his scoring touch. Sadly, an injury in January saw him lose his place in the tea, though he earned an FA Cup winner's medal by coming off the bench in the hammering of Chelsea.
Sadly, he joined Leeds at a bad time. The manager who signed him, Howard Wilkinson, was sacked soon after his signing (not helped by a home 4-0 drubbing at the hands of United) and was replaced by the dour George Graham, who was never going to have time for Sharpe's brand of wingplay. His career wound down with spells at Bradford City, Portsmouth and Exeter City, he finished his professional career after a few games for a team in Iceland - retired at 32.
In recent years, he's been spotted arsing about on reality television shows, all of which adds to the sense of unfulfilled potential. He was only 28 when we won the treble in 1999 and you feel he could have played left-wing in that game and contributed to United into the new century if things had been different. There's also the matter that he could have solved the long-standing left-sided problem the England team had through the 90s.
A great shame, then, but also some great memories.
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