You will never see Teddy Sheringham and Andy Cole socialising together. After all, throughout their time together as Manchester United players, the pair never spoke a word to each other.
Why? It was all down to an incident in 1995, two years before Sheringham moved to Old Trafford from Tottenham Hotspur. There were 20 minutes left of England's friendly encounter against Uruguay at Wembley when manager Terry Venables decided that the time was right to hand Cole his international debut.
The striker was to replace Sheringham and from this point, Cole takes up the story in his column with The Independent in 2010: "I walk on to the pitch, 60,000 or so watching. Sheringham is coming off. I expect a brief handshake, a "good luck, Coley", something.
"I am ready to shake. He snubs me. He actively snubs me, for no reason I was ever aware of then or since. He walks off. I don't even know the bloke so he can't have any issue with me. We're fellow England players, it is my debut and he snubs me.
"You know what my immediate thoughts were? 'Jesus Christ! How many people just saw Teddy Sheringham do that to me?' I was embarrassed. I was confused. And there you have it. From that moment on, I knew Sheringham was not for me."
Nevertheless, while there was no communication between the pair off the pitch, they were still able to forge a decent understanding on it. In total they played 4,581 minutes together for United, from which 54 goals were scored - that is an average of a goal around every 85 minutes.
Five of those goals were scored 15 years ago today when Southampton were dismantled by the duo during their visit to the North-West.
There was nine minutes on the clock when Cole broke the deadlock, albeit in fortunate circumstances. His drive from 20 yards out seemed to be relatively innocuous, but visiting goalkeeper Paul Jones allowed the ball to squirm under his body and into the net.
Then, just moments before the break Sheringham doubled United's advantage when, having received a pass from Paul Scholes, he duly lobbed Jones with a deft chip.
The match ball would be Sheringham's by the 55th-minute mark as he turned in David Beckham's cross to make it 3-0, before the ball ricocheted off Cole and into his path to seal the hat-trick.
Sir Alex Ferguson's side were in rampant mood at this point, although it appeared that a fifth goal would evade them after both Ryan Giggs and Beckham struck the crossbar. However, with 17 minutes remaining Cole completed the rout at the back post after Scholes had flicked on Beckham's corner.
Speaking after the final whistle, Ferguson said of Sheringham's contribution: "He's in incredible form at the moment. It's his first hat-trick for the club and I'm delighted for him."
Man United: Barthez; P Neville, Brown, G Neville (Wallwork), Irwin; Beckham, Butt, Scholes, Giggs; Sheringham (Yorke), Cole (Solskjaer)
Southampton: Jones; Dodd, Lundekvam, El Khalej, Bridge; Oakley, Draper Tessem, Kachloul; Davies, Pahars
No Data Analysis info
