Yorke and Cole on Hojlund, Martial and Man United becoming like Arsenal (2024)

Virtually 25 years on, the telepathy between Dwight Yorke and Andy Cole is as natural as their effervescent exchange of passes at Camp Nou.

They are as clinical now as they were then. Only the victims of their incision are not opponents but the current Manchester United side.

"It’s not Man United, is it?" Cole sighs when reminded the current team has a minus goal difference. "For me, that is an upsetting thing as well.

"Playing for Sir Alex, you might concede a few but what we are going to do is play the way that Man United should play, and that’s attack teams home and away, this counter-attack football? No, there is none of that. You for the jugular minute one, home or away.

"And if you lose then… Well, you’ve gone for the jugular. And that is why the manager was so good, he would let you know: 'I’m not disappointed, you have done what Man United do. If we have given away bad goals, yeah of course he would lose the plot but in general Man United have to play a certain way."

"But yeah, Coley, even with that there was still structure," Yorke notes.

READ MORE: Three United players set to return vs Arsenal but two suffer injury setbacks

READ MORE: Ten Hag speaks out on Ineos silence on manager's role

"Yeah, of course, yeah."

"Everyone played their position. What you are seeing there is a rotation that is out of sync. When you play rotational football and when you are winning games and it’s fluid, it looks great. But if you are not structurally organised, the fundamental organised structure and balance of the team, you have players who are running forward when they don’t need to run forward because they do not have a proper structure and discipline implemented.

"It looks a little bit disconnected right now and I am talking from a coaching perspective because I am studying the game. We look really disconnected and you can't do that at any level, let alone this level."

Dare this team be compared to the 1999 vintage? "It’s so far apart, it’s not even close to say the least," Yorke scoffs.

"What is more painful about it is we can’t even qualify for the Champions League. For me, that’s the minimum. You can accept you aren’t close to winning the league but when you aren’t even qualifying for the Champions League, that’s a whole new level."

"It is," Cole agrees. "But the way I look at that, if you’re going to qualify for the Champions League, you’ve got to be in it to win it."

"I get that," Yorke accepts. "I totally agree with that. But that’s where we are, that’s the brutal thing. We should never be thinking of fourth place."

"Arsenal used to finish fourth and celebrate like they’d won the league and we used to laugh at them," Cole complains. "That’s where we are."

"That’s where we are and it’s hard to understand that bit. At the start it never really registered we were playing for fourth place. That is a conversation that regularly happens – oh we finish in the top four, but what’s that? It’s crazy how the mindset has changed now and to hear me even get into that sort of conversation, we aren’t even qualifying for that, we’re out of that."

Cole arrives at Yates bar in the Printworks for the premiere of the 99 documentary dressed in a greyish blue matching jumpsuit and sporting a sagacious stubble. Yorke, who has flown in from Dubai, is clad in a tailored white knitted jacket as bright as his smile, accompanied by a dark polo, trousers and shoes. Yorke is dressed for the after-party and has probably arranged an after-after party.

The Cole-Yorke collaboration fuelled belief of a treble in January 1999, Cole's knockdown for Yorke to tap in in the 88th minute levelled United's FA Cup fourth round with Liverpool. Then Ole Gunnar Solskjaer struck the first added time winner of a season that defied belief. 'Now do you believe us?' read the back-page splash on the following day's Daily Mail.

Cole and Yorke are two of the most engaging interviewees in the 99 documentary, which commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Treble. The first episode dwells on a legendary Christmas party organised by Yorke that, conveniently, none of the players can recall in its entirety.

Yorke worked the room, balancing shots on his head. Some players' wives arrived and unloaded on joint organiser Gary Neville. Yorke, reputedly responsible for 150 of the 250 invites, wipes away tears of laughter at the memory.

“That was the traditional thing to do, but I never experienced it like Man United," Yorke recalls. "When I came here I thought everything was a bit more proper, a little more concealed, so to speak, but it was like you were still at Villa, but just on a bigger scale.

"So when we went out for the Christmas event, it was like an open cheque book, which is not usually the way you do things. So we just thought 'let's go for it' and you get to see people in a different light, you socialise with them.

"You only get to see them in the dressing room, but if you socialise with them you get to understand them a little more and some harsh words were probably said in those moments and instead of tearing us apart, it brought us a lot closer, and pretty much the rest is history. But I can tell you it was a damn good party!"

Any publishable stories?

“There was nothing good about that party! It was just great!"

United were driven to the Treble by a formidable foe in 1998 double winners Arsenal. Cole had endured final-day trauma at the Boleyn Ground, where his profligacy was costly in a 1-1 draw in 1995. But he was still affronted by Arsenal's ascent.

"When they won the title in 1998, they beat Everton and Tony Adams went through and scored a goal," Cole remembers. "And the feeling I had was, ‘this is f*****g unbelievable’, not being disrespectful to Tony.

"I was already focused on making sure the team won the league the next season. I was fortunate to win the Premier League five times but I think about the ones I didn’t. I could have won seven or eight. Giggy's won 13 but he could have won 17.

"Forget the ones you won. It’s the ones that got away that hurt you more than anything. It’s like when we lost to Dortmund in 1997 in the Champions League. To this day, it haunts me."

Time will tell which existing United players survive a planned summer exodus to be haunted by this season's European failure. Cole and Yorke both left United for Blackburn in 2002, the year Arsenal regained the title and sealed another double.

What is striking about the United of the 1990s is those involved are defined by failures more than their successes. Failure has become commonplace at United.

"It's hard because I never saw Manchester United being in this position, I've got to be brutally honest," Cole admits. "Ultimately, the team that I was involved in, we left a legacy for players who want to come to the club and try to emulate us and do the same thing.

"Sometimes I look at the team now and the teams previously and you scratch your head. Because you've got to understand what Manchester United is all about. It's about winning, it's about competing, it's about being involved in and pushing for major honours, especially in the domestic game. You touched on it: we're so far away. We keep saying, 'oh another couple of years'. But it's been longer than a couple of years, we've got to be brutally honest. When are Man United going to be involved in the title race? Who knows? It is like that now."

Cole was 24 when he donned the United shirt to become Britain's most expensive footballer in 1995. Yorke, a club-record signing in 1998, was 27. Both were established Premier League marksmen. Rasmus Hojlund, 20 when he was paraded on the Old Trafford pitch in July, had spent only a season at Atalanta in Italy.

"I have said many times, for such a young man to come to a club like Man United and be expected to score goals, it's difficult," Cole stresses. "To come to Man United and know that you have no one to learn off, it's difficult.

"When I came to Man United, I had Sparky (Mark Hughes), Eric, they moved on. Yorkey comes in, Ole, Teddy and I genuinely like to believe that we took something from each other’s game. We learned off each other.

"You have a young man coming in, he has come to Man United and everyone is saying he is Man United's number nine. And you are like, 'he doesn’t have the experience to be Manchester United’s number nine'."

Yorke chips in. "He was relatively unknown too, right?"

"Yeah." The incumbent number nine is still Anthony Martial. He has been a let-down, hasn't he?

"I think everyone knows that. Yeah, I think for someone who has been here nine years and he has not got 100 goals?" Cole is incredulous.

"People will say, 'oh he’s had injuries or whatever'. I don’t care. For someone to be at Manchester United for nine years and not got himself 100 goals in total, that tells me that something’s not right."

Can you imagine being a centre forward in this team?

"I wouldn’t want to play," Yorke opines.

"It upsets me because I know what Manchester United is all about," Cole says. "I know why I want to play for Manchester United. I want to be able to go and win things. I want to play for an unbelievable football club but I want to know that I am going to win things at the end of the day. I have walked away from a game knowing that I have completed everything I wanted to, that I have played for an amazing football club.

"There are players that have come to this club and they turn around and say Man United are s**t. Why? And they say, 'because of X,Y or Z'. But why did it not work out for you? So for everyone who says Man Utd is s**t you are going to have two players who say Man Utd is unbelievable."

The amenable PR is now trying to wrap it up but Yorke wants to have the final word. "Sorry, just quickly on that: whether you want to face that sort of aggro coming in, it’s just knowing that there’s a lack of creativity, lack of passion, the negative talk about the team.

"It’s just a real bad place to be if you are a United player. Not just a centre forward."

Yorke and Cole are still clinical.