BY OUR REPORTER
Cristiano Ronaldo passed his manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s Manchester United goal tally by scoring twice in the 2-2 Champions League draw with Atalanta on Tuesday.
Ronaldo’s 126th United goal drew him level with former striker Solskjaer, who played for the club between 1996 and 2007.
The pair overlapped as players for four seasons at the end of that spell, Ronaldo scoring his first 57 United goals and Solskjaer his final 12, and here the PA news agency looks at how the pair got to their matching totals.
Ronaldo has scored four times in the league since his return to lift his career total in the English top flight from 84 to 88.
That leaves him three behind Solskjaer, who hit 91 with his most prolific season being his first when he hit 18 in 33 league appearances in 1996-97. He added 17 in 2001-02 and had five double-figure seasons in all despite regularly being used as a substitute, once scoring four after coming on in the 71st minute against Nottingham Forest.
A succession of knee injuries hampered the latter part of his playing career but he returned to score seven league goals and 11 in all competitions in the 2006-07 campaign, leaving him sixth on United’s league scoring list in the Premier League era.
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