his european record is great. he never dominated, but it's all but impossible to dominate europe, as barcelona, "The Greatest Team in History", are showing.
english football took a good 3-4 seasons to recover from the exodus of talent caused by the heysel ban (and fergie won the cup winners cup the season that was enforced) plus EPL teams were affected by the foreigner rules which meant they could play any UK players in the league but anyone not english counted as one of their foreigners. with giggs, irwin and hughes being key players it kinda shafted them a bit.
so you have about 17 seasons or so he could realistically compete in europe, they won 2 cups. only madrid and barcelona managed more than that with 3 over that time period and milan managed it twice. so man u were basically the 3rd or 4th most succesful european team, pretty good if you ask me.