HENRIK Larsson will come and go from United barely leaving a ripple. There, I've said it, and am now crouching in my bunker waiting for the heavy artillery to start.

The overwhelming consensus of opinion is that Sir Alex Ferguson's signing of the Swedish legend is a typical piece of brilliant Fergie opportunism, a boost to United's season which could just give them the edge in the scramble towards the title.

There have even been comparisons drawn with the arrival of Eric Cantona in 1992, a signing which undoubtedly transformed a very good United team into a title-winning side.

It is hard to take such comparisons seriously. Don't get me wrong, I believe Larsson has been an outstanding footballer and one of the best strikers to grace Europe for the past two decades.

Five years ago, United fans would have crawled to Glasgow to plead with him to play for the club if they thought it would have helped to convince him.

I also hope that I am proved painfully wrong, and that Larsson scores enough goals to have Jose Mourinho whining like a stuck pig.

But to my mind he is not the answer, and is a cut-price, short-term option.

Larsson is 35, had slumped into semi-retirement with Helsingborgs after a distinguished career, and has never played in the Premiership.

No matter how much talent you have, no matter the level at which you have played abroad, you need time to get used to English football. Just ask Michael Ballack and Andrei Shevchenko.

Hurly-burly

Ask Patrice Evra and Nemanja Vidic, both excellent players who are only now finding their feet after 12 months getting used to the hurly-burly of our game.

Larsson made his name at Celtic, where the pace and physical nature of the game are similar to the Premiership, but where the quality of opposition falls some way short. And he had an Indian summer at Barcelona, where the opposition was superior in terms of technique but did not play at the high-octane pace of the English game.

Larsson himself has an interesting take on this. He says that for a striker, no matter where in the world you play, you get no time on the ball, which is a fair point.

But the fact remains that nobody has stepped into United from abroad and been an instant hit, perhaps with the exceptions of Ruud van Nistelrooy and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

Cantona was a big hit at United, but he had already cut his teeth at Leeds - and of his first 15 games for the Yorkshire club, on loan from Nantes, nine were from the bench.

The feeling at Elland Road was that he was a luxury, a player who would embellish a winning performance but go missing when the going got hard. It was only after his permanent signing that he exploded into the kind of action that had Fergie slavering at the chance to nick him for é1.2million.

Larsson has nine games to make an impact before his loan expires and he will head back to the relative pipe-and-slippers football of the Swedish League. Nine games to become a legend. He can play in the two-legged Champions League tie against Lille, a tie which should be a breeze for the Reds, with or without him, but by the time the quarter-finals come round - and the real test of United's mettle starts - Larsson should be back in Helsingborgs.

Many United fans are already convinced that Larsson will stay for the remainder of the season if his initial ten-week loan is a big success. But Fergie has already said that the loan is strictly a ten-week affair, and that it would be dishonourable to put pressure on Helsingborgs to allow him to stay any longer.

It will be a terrible shame if Larsson does pass through Old Trafford without making anything more than a few marks in the statistics books, because given more time he could have been a great.

It is easy to see why Fergie has looked short-term, because there is a dearth of top-class, affordable, obtainable strikers. It is a case of delaying the inevitable.

But after all the plaudits, it would have been better to give a chance to Giuseppe Rossi, who HAS Premiership experience from his loan with Newcastle.

What do you think? Have your say.