57. John O’Kane

Signed from: Youth team
Debut: 2-1 win vs Port Vale (League Cup tie), September 21st 1994
League Record: one game (plus one as sub)
Sold to: Everton (£400,000), January 1998

As a full-back, John O'Kane (seen fourth from left on the back row of the picture above) had little to no chance of becoming a regular when we had Irwin, May and the Neville brothers around. An opening day injury crisis saw him a sub in the opening game of the 1995/96 season, where our 3-1 defeat was met with the now infamous line from Alan Hansen that "you never win anything with kids".

To give Hansen some mitigation, United's subsequent success that season was only in part down to the youth of Beckham, Scholes, Butt and the Nevilles. They were surrounded by experienced quality players like Cantona, Schmeichel, Irwin, Bruce and Pallister. Even the likes of Keane and Giggs (then in their mid 20s) had the best part of 150-200 games each under their belts. We were hardly a team of "kids" at the time.

As for O'Kane, he must have felt confident when Everton signed him up after a series of loan spells at Bury and Bradford, but he struggled to make an impression and the he moved progressively downwards with moves to Bolton, Blackpool and then non-league Hyde United. Like Simon Davies, he perhaps left it too late to leave United - he was nearly 24 when he did so.

After a three year stint with Hyde, he eventually returned to his native Nottingham, where he has been doing support work in social care.