2. Clayton Blackmore

Signed from: Youth team
Debut: 2-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest, May 16th 1984
League Record: 150 games (+36 as sub), 19 goals
Sold to: Middlesbrough (free transfer), May 1994

Clayton may well appreciate that I didn't use of a pic of him with the classic 1980s look of curly hair and dodgy 'tasch... but "Sunbed" was one of my favourite players of the early 1990s for reasons I can’t clearly recall. I think I just thought he had a cool name.

A keen sportsman as a youth, Blackmore was in the same Wales Schoolboys squad as Mark Hughes, who had already signed forms with United and urged young Clayton to do the same. We had a decent batch of young players in the early 80s, making the 1982 FA Youth Cup final with a team including the two Welsh lads alongside Norman Whiteside, Graeme Hogg and Billy Garton. All of them would graduate to the first team.

Blackmore would make his debut the following year, at an end of season game, but it wasn't until 1987 and the arrival of Alex Ferguson that he began to get a real chance in the first team. Famously, he was (I think) the first United player to wear every outfield shirt number (in those pre-squad number days) from 2-11, his versatility, as the cliché goes, also being part of his problem as it never allowed him to pin down one position.

1990/91 season, however, saw him mainly play at left back, where he managed to have several memorable moments for himself. The European Cup Winners Cup quarter-final vs Montpellier saw him score a long-distance free kick that, in my memory, was hit from the half way line and shot into the top corner. However, a few years ago I finally saw it again and it was a fairly well hit shot that the keeper spilled into his own goal. Funny how that happens with how you remember things. All the same, Clayton had a hefty shot on him and scored a fair few screamers – a free kick in a cup game at Leeds springs to mind.

His finest moment was to come in the final of the Cup Winners Cup when he cleared a goal bound shot off the line in the final minutes to secure the trophy. He's got my eternal thanks for that one.

After that high, he returned to being a back-up player. In 1992/93, with Paul Parker injured, Blackmore played enough games at the start of the season to earn a championship medal, though he barely got a sniff for the next year and a half. Bryan Robson took him to Teeside in 1994 and he was until a couple of years ago still playing, despite being well into his 40s, in the League of Wales.

Fun fact: on scoring what turned out to be the winning goal in a FA Cup tie against Hereford United in 1990, Clayton give their fans (who had been barracking him on account of being Welsh) a two fingered salute. However, the TV camera managed to only get his arm in shot, probably saving him a hefty fine and ban.