63. Terry Cooke

Signed from: Youth team
Debut: 3-0 win vs Bolton Wanderers, September 16th 1995
League Record: one game (plus three as sub)
Sold to: Manchester City (£1,000,000), March 1999

I'd been vaguely aware of Terry Cooke from reading the United magazine: he'd won the 1995 Young Player of the Year award at the club and given the mood of the club at time, with numerous products of the youth policy being thrown into the first team, it wasn't a surprise when Cooke also got his chance.

After the 3-1 disaster at Aston Villa on the opening day of the season, we'd won four on the bounce before Bolton came to town. Our front six that day featured five homegrown youngsters (Butt, Scholes, Beckham, Giggs and our man here) plus Lee Sharpe, who had been at the club for seven years, since he was 17. Cooke looked good, showing some clever flicks and providing the cross for which Ryan Giggs opened the scoring.

He had a harder time a few days later, when he came off the bench in a League Cup tie against York City. What should have been a routine job went horribly wrong and we crumbled to a humiliating 3-0 defeat. A couple of weeks later, Cooke was given a chance to redeem our honour in the second leg - and to give him his dues, he contributed with a goal. But our 3-1 win wasn't enough.

Around this time, Cooke was pictured with his fellow youngsters alongside the Youth Team Coach Eric Harrison as he received some order - but it was a shortlived spell in the limelight for the West Midlands lad. As a right winger, he wasn't in the same league as David Beckham (not asking much!) and in the summer of 1996, other players were signed who could play that position and a series of loan spells followed over the next couple of years.

One of these proved to be successful, when he joined a Manchester City side then in freefall, dropping as far as the third tier - some of their nu-fans attracted to their current powerful side may struggle to believe only 15 years ago they were playing the likes of Macclesfield Town. Struggling to adapt to life far from the top, Cooke seemed to be something of a catalyst, scoring five goals in 17 games to secure a permanent transfer and help push them into the promotion play-offs. In the dramatic final of those against Gillingham, in which only a last-gasp Paul Dikov equalising goal saved them from disaster, Cooke slotted away a penalty in the shoot-out that helped City to victory.

That was probably the peak of Cooke's career. The following saw him suddenly fall out of fashion with City manager Joe Royle (it was rumoured that his not being picked was due to the club not being able to afford the additional fees to United that would be incurred if he hit a certain number of appearances) and he again found himself down the rounds as a loaned-out player before a free transfer in 2001.

He later went on a globe-trotting serious of career moves, with spells in North America, Australia and Azerbaijan before injury forced his retirement in 2011.