OLE Gunnar Solskjaer is not surprised in the least by the number of Sir Alex Ferguson's pupils who have entered the management game.

Four of Ferguson's 19 rival Premier League bosses enjoyed the best years of their playing careers at Manchester United, with plenty of others underneath.

Solskjaer is the latest to try his luck, as the Reds reserve team manager, a role Ferguson personally allocated to the Norwegian.

"I am not surprised at the number of ex-Alex Ferguson players who have gone on to be managers," he said.

"Something about the gaffer rubs off on you. He knows his players. He signs players he sees a little bit of himself in. They have the right personality.

"You can't copy anyone, management is not like that.

"But you take little bits. But he has seen and done everything and I have tried to learn from the way he never panics.

"He just takes his time and makes a decision and sticks by it."

Ferguson's philosophy has stood the test of time, although if reports in Spain are to be believed, Cristiano Ronaldo will take it to the limit by informing United of his intention to quit Old Trafford for Real Madrid next week.

It is not a debate Solskjaer is willing to get involved in and neither do United want anything to cloud the Norwegian's testimonial match with Espanyol tomorrow.

The 35-year-old freely admits he could never have imagined to achieve so much when he arrived from Molde in 1996.

Solskjaer's name still reverberates around Old Trafford on matchdays even though it is over a year since he was forced to quit due to a persistent knee injury that first surfaced in 2003.

Status

Only Eric Cantona and Roy Keane are afforded such status by the Stretford End, proving beyond doubt Solskjaer's popularity.

There is much more to such hero worship than his last-minute winner in the 1999 Champions League Final win over Bayern Munich.

But it remains an indelible imprint on Solskjaer's career.

"I remember sticking my foot out and the ball going in but everything else is a bit of a blur," he said.

"It was pure instinct. I had never even done it in practice. I was not familiar with the feeling when my foot hit the ball, so I didn't know it was going in. Thankfully it did.

"Funnily enough we had done something very similar to Liverpool in the FA Cup earlier that season and I got the winner then. So while we were surprised to beat Bayern, it wasn't a shock that we achieved it in the way we did."

Solskjaer knows he will never escape the attention of 1999, nor does he want to. But he prefers to view his career as a whole, rather than focus on that one, dramatic, aspect.

Ask him for the moment of greatest satisfaction and he will tell you the 2007 Premier League title win, a championship he shared in the success of despite already undergoing a succession of operations on the knee that would ultimately cause him to quit.

"Three years before I came on as a substitute in the FA Cup Final against Millwall honestly thinking it would be my last game for United," he said.

"I knew I needed another operation and I just felt that would be it.

"So to win the Premier League again, one that my eldest son Noah was old enough to remember, gave me something I will always treasure."

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