Three number sevens: Cantona, Beckham, Ronaldo

Squad numbers were announced at Old Trafford this month, and the seven shirt went to Mason Mount again. Nobody said much about it. That silence tells you something, because for a decade or so that shirt was the loudest thing in English football.

United are back in the Champions League under Michael Carrick after finishing third, so the new season arrives with a bit of hope attached. It seems a fair moment to ask which of the great Premier League sevens was actually the greatest. Three names, five categories, one crown.

The Player Calculator runs on Output, Craft, Big Occasions, Longevity and Influence. Five stars in each, twenty five in total. Here is how they land.

Eric Cantona

Output: 3. Never a huge scorer by the numbers. That was not really the job.

Craft: 4. The collar, the chest, the chip against Sunderland where he stood still afterwards and let the ground come to him. Not the quickest, not the trickiest, but he saw the pass a beat before everyone else.

Big Occasions: 5. Four league titles in five seasons. Two doubles. The winner in the 1996 FA Cup final against Liverpool, struck through a crowd of bodies with about five minutes left. He turned up when the season was being decided, over and over.

Longevity: 3. Five years, one of them ruined by his own boot at Selhurst Park and the eight month ban that followed, and then retirement at thirty. Short, and self-shortened.

Influence: 5. United had not won the league in twenty six years when he arrived from Leeds in November 1992. They won it that season and became a machine. Ferguson has said as much, and so has every player who watched him train.

Total: 20.

David Beckham

Output: 3. Around 85 goals in nearly 400 appearances. Judge him on that and you have misunderstood the player. Judge him on the number of goals that started with his right foot and the score changes completely.

Craft: 5. The best crosser of a ball English football has produced, and it is not an argument. Dead ball, corner, forty yard diagonal, all of it landing on a coin. The halfway line goal at Selhurst Park in 1996 was not a fluke, it was a man who had been practising exactly that since he was eleven.

Big Occasions: 5. The treble in 1999, and specifically the final in Barcelona, where he played in central midfield because Keane and Scholes were suspended, then delivered both injury time corners. Two goals in two minutes, both starting with him. Ballon d'Or runner up that year.

Longevity: 5. Eight seasons as a first team regular, six league titles, two FA Cups. He inherited the seven from Cantona in 1997 having worn 24 and then 10, and he held it until he left for Madrid in 2003. Longest servant of the three by a distance.

Influence: 4. He turned United into a global brand in a way no player before him had, particularly across Asia, and he made the club's shirt a piece of clothing people wore who had never seen a match. He also carried a level of press attention after 1998 that would have finished most players.

Total: 22.

Cristiano Ronaldo

Output: 5. Forty two goals in 2007-08 from a wide forward. Nobody else on this list is close.

Craft: 5. He arrived as a stepover merchant who fell over a lot and rebuilt himself into the most complete attacker in Europe inside four years. The free kick against Portsmouth, the header in Moscow, the run against Arsenal from his own half.

Big Occasions: 5. Champions League winner in 2008, Ballon d'Or the same year, three league titles in a row.

Longevity: 4. Six seasons first time, then a second spell that started with 24 goals in a struggling side and ended badly in an interview with Piers Morgan.

Influence: 4. He changed what players thought was possible with a body and a training schedule. What he did not do is change United, because they were already champions when he got good and the club fell apart the moment he left for eighty million.

Total: 23.

The verdict

One star in it, and Ronaldo takes the crown. He scored more than the other two combined in his best three seasons and won a European Cup as the outstanding player in Europe.

But Beckham at 22 is closer than most people expect, and the reason is the category everyone undervalues. He was there for eight years, at that level, every week, while being followed around by half the newspapers in the country. Cantona's five years and Ronaldo's six look brief next to that.

Cantona takes 20 and still has the best case of the three if you ask a different question. Ask who was the best player and I say Ronaldo. Ask who mattered most to Manchester United and I would take Cantona, and I would take him quickly.

The shirt currently belongs to a midfielder who has spent most of his United career injured. That is not a joke at Mason Mount's expense. It is the point. Three players made that number mean something, and everyone since has been measured against them.

Cantona 20, Beckham 22, Ronaldo 23. Three players. One crown. You decide...