We will all miss Cristiano Ronaldo

"Cristiano Ronaldo, it turns out, was rubbish," writes Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail. "Glad we cleared that up. It was easy to be waylaid into thinking differently." The reaction to his signing for Real Madrid has brought forth a torrent of articles questioning his value to Manchester United in particular and English football in general. And Samuel archly asks what Ronaldo ever did in his time at Old Trafford.

"I mean, what with three consecutive Premier League titles, man-of-the-match performance in a victorious FA Cup final, two League Cups, a Champions League trophy, the Club World Cup, FIFA World Player of the Year award, two Footballer of the Year awards, two PFA Players' Player of the Year awards, Ballon D'Or, European Golden Shoe, PFA Young Player of the Year, Portuguese Player of the Year and 67 goals in two seasons.

"It was easy to misguidedly imagine he could actually play a bit. Apparently not. Apparently he was a preening peacock, a narcissist, a cheat, a liar, a burden to his team-mates and few tears will be shed at his departure."

His point made, Samuel goes on to place Ronaldo in the context of the changing face of English football. "The goalscoring burden is no longer on the strikers alone. It was Ronaldo's emergence as a prolific match-winner to supplant United's forward line that altered the dynamic of the Premier League. To dismiss his involvement as the odd good game, or the fortunate bounty of his selfish streak, is to forget the hold Chelsea had on English football when Jose Mourinho was first in charge."

United were second best to Chelsea until Ronaldo sparked for them. His importance to Sir Alex Ferguson's team is impossible to over-emphasise: "there were 21 matches in the last two seasons in which a goal, or goals, from Ronaldo influenced the outcome, and in that time he scored 37 per cent of all Manchester United's goals in the Premier League".

Simply put, "Ronaldo altered the way English football was perceived, and redefined Manchester United's place in it, and no amount of revisionism should cloud that." ·