I think he ended the season very well, but wasn't so good earlier on.
A Look at Goalkeeper Options and Replacing De Gea
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He had 2-3 games in the beginning that were pretty good, shot-stopping wise. After that, he was pretty poor, bar a couple exceptions. He was a step down quality wise from Henderson, which both Steve Cooper all but said in his press conferences, and most Forest fans would agree.
He is a decent shot stopper and in 1v1, but he is mediocre to poor in other facets of his game. He is not the best passer, he is not good on crosses.
But he does have confidence, is very athletic and can pull of some crazy acrobatic saves. So as a backup on a one-season loan, it's alright. Not great, but decent.
I think it was the other way around. Started pretty good, but fell off.
This is how I remember it too
Probably not, but why would that matter? It's not like Murtough wouldn't consult Ten Hag's opinion first on the players and just extend whoever he himself deems good enough.
Absolutely. If you've hired a head coach then it's important to consult the person who is managing the playing squad, or else you end up in a pretty bad situation. So you don't sign off on any contract agreement without consulting the man who is in charge of developing the team.
I've been following Edu and Arteta at Arsenal since 2019, and they made a lot of mistakes. But even though they finished 8th, 8th, 5th and 2nd in the league for the last 4 or 5 years and signed duds like Pepe (Edu), they've carried on signing players as a team. And at any other big club they might've been sacked for finishing close to mid table twice and having a very mixed record in the transfer window, but Arsenal persevered with them after several years of mixed recruitment and now they seem to have got things right and work as a team to sign players.
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Tbf I don't think this is unlikely, or all that 'sensational'.
Even being asked to take a significant paycut from his record wage, we will probably offer him a higher wage than he's likely to get anywhere else. If for some reason we're unable to sign someone else (the mind boggles, but still), it might well be in his interests to have waited as at that point he'll have us over a barrel somewhat and will definitely end up on a good wage.
This is true. The club are in the dark as to whether funds for a new goalkeeper will be approved.
That doesn't seem like great planning to me.
Might not be true
Or they just want to give him a send off before he signs for someone else and they can't?
I hope so
Anyone else really nervous about changing keeper considering how we've royally fecked up every single other position with multiple attempts.
100s of millions on CBs, midfielders, forwards - at least the keeper position was settled for the last 10 years. Now imagine that also turns into a bit of a circus of players in and out. We'll be fecked
100s of millions on CBs, midfielders, forwards - at least the keeper position was settled for the last 10 years. Now imagine that also turns into a bit of a circus of players in and out. We'll be fecked
Yeah let's give DDG a 5 year contract and enjoy him tied to his line and kicking like a scared rabbit in headlights. We have to move on!!
It sounds like what it is. Nonsense.
I was just basing it on something I saw.
A bit. We held down the position for so long after instability of others there. Game has moved on unfortunately, and better ability playing the ball is worth the risk it seems.
I think he’s been really badly treated. Offered a lower wage deal, which he accepted only for it to be withdrawn and something even lower offered.
And we’re repeatedly told we have a finite amount of money to spend due to budget, takeover delays, FFP etc that signing a GK shouldn’t be the priority. Midfield and striker (or two). Maybe even RB should be above GK. Much more sensible with a finite budget to extend and pay the £20m wages for a season, than spend 50m (with wages on top) for an Onana or Diego Costa.
honestly think it will be difficult to replace him. Ok he’s not as good as he was but he’s still a good player and I think people underestimate how hard it is being a goalkeeper at Man Utd. The players we’ve been linked to will do well to be a clear improvement.
Nah, we’ll be fine regardless. Even when De Gea was carrying us, it’s not like we were fighting relegation or anything. We might have finished 7th or 8th instead of 6th a few times but it wouldn’t have been catastrophic by any means.
The change to a new GK radically changes the style of football we want to play so if Ten Hag does get the boot we’ll have to fully commit to this brand of playing out from the back come what may now, which will probably be good for us overall because we’ll stop chasing names and have to sign players that can play within the system instead, and hire managers that use this system.
He's a keeper that can't sweep, can't pass, is the worst in the league at dealing with crosses and high balls, has spent five years consistently making mistakes in our biggest games, and his once amazing shot-stopping ability is now only slightly above average. He is not difficult to replace at all, in fact it will be harder to get someone worse than it is to get an improvement. Not impossible so I'm not going to sit here and say it's 100% guaranteed his replacement will be an improvement, but the sad reality is that we can easily get somebody who is an improvement over De Gea yet they still won't be good enough either.
It is called keeping up appearances. I think letting De Gea's contract run out is better than signing him and then trying to sell him. Less confrontation and more honour in this.
Literally the only way is up. It’s like arguing that we should just retain Weghorst than not gamble on another striker.
Well put. It's baffling how many can't see the obvious.
Pretty much this. Yes, he can still make the amazing gravity defying save…but it’s the simple things he makes a mess of (West Ham game in May is a perfect example). And it got to the point where I couldn’t believe they kept passing back to him. At least he started playing those long more often. When Maguire was in, I couldn’t watch them try to play out of the back.
He was a great steward for the club for more than a decade…but it’s time to move on.
Now De Gea is out of contract what does he do? Does he still turn up to training when it starts? Can see an embarrassing headline in a few weeks “De Gea barred from entering Carrington”
We could have upgraded him with Romero a few years ago, it's really not that hard. This isn't like replacing Van Der Sar or Schmeicel, it's a different era. There are loads of top class GK's around today that wouldn't have looked as good playing 10+ years ago. Hell, even the pressure of being a Utd GK isn't as big as it once was.
I have 0 doubts that a Costa, Maignan or Onana would not only replace him but be a massive improvement.
I've watched Virtually all of Brightons football since De Zerbi took over and I think even Jason Steele would be an upgrade and I hadn't even heard of him before half way through this season and he's 32.
Hope we get Costa, Onana or Maignan. Those 3 are my favorites to replace DDG due to style, age, and ceiling. Raya is good, but just not good enough for United.
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To be fair I don't think Obama would make a good keeper
6 weeks till the start of the season and this whole keeper situation is a complete joke.
According to the Whitwell article, there are about 10 possibilities that could happen, and there isn't exactly a clear favourite between them.
According to the Whitwell article, there are about 10 possibilities that could happen, and there isn't exactly a clear favourite between them.
He's a decent basketball player...so maybe. Opposite of Hakeem Olajuwon who started off as a keeper growing up in Nigeria.
Your point is a good one and I don’t disagree with it however re the bolded part that isn’t true at all. Bravo was a fantastic ball player (that’s the only reason he made it at that level!). He was just shockingly bad at every other aspect of keeping. Search Bravo best saves on YouTube and you genuinely won’t find a good one! He was the opposite extreme where he actually had none of the fundemantals required of a keeper but was only good on the ball. The reason pep binned him Is because even though he knows the importance of ball playing, he also knows that you do still need to be able to actually save goals.
Good points, he was never a world class shot stopper. But he wasn't as bad as you make it out to be either.
I could easily find videos of him pulling off good saves. While I think the video title is hyperbolic (they aren't Insane saves), he shows very good positioning before shots are made. Several of the shots are aimed straight at him, but his good positioning and deflection puts the ball out of harm's way on several occasions. Much like Van der Sar - who also had good positioning - many of the shots will end up hitting him dead on center. That's just good positional goalkeeping, and of course also a touch of poor finishing in some cases. But good positioning will force poor finishing, so that's a plus, not a minus.
There are also a few worldies in there. He is especially fierce in closing down 1v1, being fast and aggressive to close down strikers running through before they can pull off a decent finish. That's a high class skill, that someone like De Gea completely lacks. It's one of the things that make Allison so good, as his 1v1 is a specialty. Bravo is good in that area, and that's an impressive and tough skill to pull off.
So I partly agree, and you made a strong argument. But he isn't as bad as you made him out to be. He just wasn't good enough for Pep.
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To be fair though, compared to de Gea there isn’t a single great save in there. De Gea has made so many fantastic saves so the bar is pretty high there, I still think Bravo was much better on the ball than his other aspects, but yes agreed pep ultimately knew he wasn’t good enough overall. Ederson is certainly not the best shot stopper in the league, but does make up for it in other ways. Either way I completely agree with the point and I’ve been banging the drum for ages that we need to replace. I really do think a new even half decent keeper will make a massive difference!
If it’s not Onana, Costa or Raya I’d just keep DDG.
Seeing ETH going for yet more Dutch league players is making me nervous.
Seeing ETH going for yet more Dutch league players is making me nervous.
Yep, well said. I think we are pretty much aligned on what matters. It's come to the point where many teams have backup keepers who are better than De Gea. Many fans will scoff at that, but it's just the sad truth.
I feel bad for him at this point. Well, as bad as you can possibly feel for a multi-millionaire living a dream life. He's like a '90s keeper stuck in the present. Heck, even the keepers back then would claim crosses and get physically involved.
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Yep agreed. I think where I differ from some is I don’t agree with the revisionism. At one stage I really do think de Gea was possibly the best keeper in the world. The saves he made I don’t think any other keeper in the world could make, but that also doesn’t stop me realising that he’s been declining since 2018 and the game has absolutely passed him by. It’s that same point that makes me believe a new keeper will be a revelation here. Hell in highlight seeing what I see now, I actually believe Alison was a bigger sighing for Liverpool than Van Dyke. The fact they both signed in the same window elevated van Dyke, Allison was such a massive upgrade for the scousers. We are crying out for the same change!
Bloke from Feyenoord has been said to be in addition to a first choice keeper (Onana) in all I've read, rather than instead.