Let me get the usual accusations out of the way by making clear that this is not a personal vendetta against the player, he seems like a good professional and a decent person, this is purely about about the game of football.
It's not his fault that he's been massively overhyped by our fans and the mainstream media alike.
This mess with De Gea pretty much sums up the club at the moment, anyone with even an ounce of footballing knowledge could see this coming a mile off.
Unfortunately, the most important people in this instance, our board, clearly don't possess that ounce of knowledge.
People are comparing the decision to give De Gea a new contract to the Sanchez saga, in my opinion, this is worse, because nobody could have predicted Sanchez's sudden decline whereas De Gea's decline was far from sudden.
An entire year and a half of horrendous form is not a 'blip'.
I personally have never ever got the hype about the player.
It was a bizarre signing in the first place I thought, it's not as if he was playing really well in Spain, he'd just come off the back of conceding over 53 goals in the league for Atletico Madrid.
"He's not cut out for the physicality of the premier league, no matter how good a shot stopper he is" I thought when I first watched him, hoping I was wrong because I'm no expert.
Based on his first season, I was not wrong unfortunately.
Yes, he improved slightly the second year, but those that think we won the league because of a solid defence that year need to go back and check the stats, because we conceded over 40 league goals.
Luckily we had world class forwards to compensate back then, we don't now, but that weakness is still there and still needs fixing.
To be clear, it's pretty obvious De Gea is not the only problem, we have many others, but we need to stop skipping over the goalkeeping position like it's all sorted because of a new contract, it's not, far from it.
For me, despite being a world class shot stopper (at times) he has always been so under par at the other equally important aspects of goalkeeping to be considered anywhere near the best in the world.
It's actually baffled me for years how many people, including those paid fortunes to analyse the game, constantly overlook these other flaws and proclaim De Gea as one of the greatest ever.
My only conclusion is that we are now living in the 'YouTube clips' generation where most people don't actually sit and watch full games as much.
In these situations, it's easier for a highlight reel of good saves to mask over more technical sides of the game.
Fair enough, people have less time, I don't watch as many games as I used to either, apart from Utd matches, which I always make an effort to watch (as painful as it is right now).
As I said, anyone who knows even a little about the game and regularly watched Utd over the years will surely have noted the amount of goals we have conceded as a direct result of De Gea's inability to come out off his line and command HIS box.
It's not as if the recent goals conceded against Everton and Man City are one offs, this has been happening week in week out since the day he signed for the club, he may as well not be there when a cross comes in.
Another problem for us when it comes to stats etc., is that goals like the ones conceded against City/Everton don't necessarily get recorded as a direct goalkeeping error because you have to look a bit deeper than the clearly obvious recent blunder against Watford, to notice it.
My point being, there has been literally dozens of goals over the years we've conceded like that but yet they don't get recorded as goalkeeping errors.
As I said, when this is factored in, it really is truly baffling to me how De Gea is put up on a pedestal as one of the greatest keepers ever, and our saviour the past decade.
On that note of him being our 'saviour', what did we/he actually achieve in this time?
Is anyone really that bothered about finishing 6th instead of 10th?
So these 4/5 seasons when he was our talisman, our player of the year and saviour (apparantley)
What exactly did we achieve apart from mediocrity?
Is that his level then?
The biggest thing we did do in this era was win the Europa lg (and more importantly claim a champions league place because of it) and he had no part in that at all, Romero played.
Even during the David Moyes era, he let us down at the most crucial moment with a horrific mistake against Sunderland in the league Cup semi final, we were seconds away from the final and he gifted Phil Bardsley an equaliser with an absolute howler.
I personally don't care that much about the league Cup and I'm not for one second suggesting that this was the sole reason David Moyes failed, but still, we would have played Man City in the final and who knows what could have happened.
It certainly would have been a huge moment for David Moyes, having never won a trophy, but De Gea denied him that by bottling it when it mattered.
You can throw in pretty much his entire Spain career as another elite level failure (difference being they had the brains to address the situation).
The last year, under Solskjaer, was the first time in a long time that we were gathering any momentum and doing it by playing good attacking football, but both in the last two games, and last year when our unbeaten run ended at Arsenal, that momentum has been killed as a direct result of poor goalkeeping by De Gea.
Those mistakes were a massive reason we didn't qualify for the champions league last year and are a massive reason we are not just two points behind 4th place Chelsea right now (all momentum to put pressure on them after their blip is completely gone now).
We can't afford another five years of this.
It's now or never for me, if we want to give ourselves the best chance of getting back to where we should be then I'm sorry but De Gea needs to be replaced now.
Obviously realising this in the summer (as many of us did) would have been much better and we would have saved ourselves quite a few quid, but what's done is done, it can't be changed now, we'll just have to take the financial hit, in many ways we deserve it for being so shortsighted.
In reality, I know this isn't going to happen, I can see what's actually going to happen coming a mile off.
We'll stick with him and then the next time he makes even a half decent save, that save will be replayed all over the media as if it's some sort of proof that the doubters/haters were wrong.
Fast forward a few weeks and when it really matters again, hell make another 'uncharacteristic' blunder that 'you just don't see from top keepers like De Gea'.
It's the same cycle that's been happening for ten years.
If indeed, this situation continues and we continue to not even attempt to fix it, then we deserve all the mid-table mediocrity we get.
Happy Christmas fellow Red Devils.
. De Gea has a brain fart almost every game imo, indirectly way more than 7 this season. The two aren't even remotely comparable.. When he's not fumbling shots or miskicking, he's getting bullied by opponents every freekick/cross/1v1's