3. Lee Martin

Signed from: Youth team
Debut: 2-1 win vs Wimbledon (as sub), May 9th 1988
League Record: 56 games (+17 as sub), 1 goal
Sold to: Celtic (£350,000), January 1994

The first local player to crop up, if we count Hyde as being “local” to Manchester. Which it probably isn't really – I didn't think that one through very well, did I?

It’s hard to talk about Lee Martin without instantly connecting him to his winning goal in the replay of 1990 FA Cup final – our first trophy under Ferguson, which doubtless won over many of the doubters the manager had gathered over the previous two mediocre league seasons.

But here's the kicker from this fan's perspective: I didn't see the goal at the time. Of course, I'd watched the first game and pretty much burst into tears when Ian Wright scored in extra time to make it 3-2. Mercifully, we scraped through to a replay a few days later. But this meant it was mid-week. On a school night. Bearing in mind I was a mere slip of a nine-year-old, my dear old mam insisted I had to go to bed at my normal time - unluckily for me, my dad was working night shifts at the time, so wasn't around to offer support. So I missed most of the game.

Of course, it was a daft idea from her, as I was unable to sleep and stood at the top of the stairs hoping to hear the commentary. Around ten, mam spotted me and gave me a very stern look. I asked the score. 1-0, she replied. Who scored? When she said "Lee Martin", I was disbelieving. After all, he'd only scored once before, and that was because West Ham's Alvin Martin had hit a clearance against him. But when I got up at something like 6am the next day to watch the whole video-taped game before school, there he was: chesting down a long cross-field pass and slamming it past Nigel Martyn and forever having a source of free drinks from United fans of a certain age.

The man himself had made his debut nearly two years prior to this, in an end-of-season dead rubber against Wimbledon, then in the pomp of their "Crazy Gang" years. I heard a story that Vinnie Jones was acting the Big Man and throwing his weight around, buoyed by the fact he was playing the FA Cup final the next week. Eventually, it has been said, Bryan Robson tired of this, stood next to him and suggested it would be a terrible shame if he missed the final through a broken leg or suchlike. Jones was suitably worried that Robbo would carry through with this as to keep a low-profile through the rest of the game. No idea if that's true, but I'd love it to be so.

Lee Martin would be a fairly regular presence over the next two seasons or so, sharing the left-back slot with the likes of Clayton Blackmore and fellow youngster Lee Sharpe. I also seem to remember him filling in at left wing on a couple of occasions. Never flash or dynamic, he was a fair enough player whose days were numbered once we signed Dennis Irwin in the summer of 1990. The Irishman initially took the right-back slot with Blackmore settling in on the opposite flank for most of 1990/91.

The last time around then I remember Martin starting a game was the European Cup Winners Cup quarter-final against Montpellier, in which he managed to put one into his own net. Records show he played a few more games that season, but didn't make the bench for ECWC final and was never a serious contender again, playing in the odd League Cup game or European tie when we needed some English players.

Subsequently, I was shocked watching Match of the Day in the autumn of 1993 when I saw him in our team playing Everton. He played a small part in the build up to Lee Sharpe’s winning goal and maybe getting seen on TV again helped him win a move to Celtic (managed by former red Lou Macari) soon after. However, it never worked out for him, as injury woes saw him retire from pro football at the age of 30.

The first of many in this story, then, of early promise not leading to a successful top flight career, though perhaps the only one we'll see where a single goal ensures they live forever in club history.