The hypocrisy on the forum is astounding!
We have Lindelof who gets crucified any time he has a 7/10 game, and yet for some reason De Gea gets a free pass from the same fans despite the fact that he's been routinely costing us points in games for more than 2 years now. And all because he performed good for about 3 seasons(which I think isn't the case. I'll explain it below)
Hello? We are talking about David de Gea, the same man who didn't jump ship to Madrid because our fax machine "broke down". The same David de Gea who went back on a previously agreed deal with both the club and the agent so he could get even more money.
He isn't Antonio Valencia or Bryan Robson. The only reason he is with us is because no sane club is willing to pay him this amount of money.
And since we've established that he's a mercenary, we should treat him as such. If he performs, great. If not, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Also, his insane reflexes fooled a lot of the fans into believing that he is a good goalkeeper. Fantastic shot-stopper? Yes. Goalkeeper? No
There is more to your game than simply stopping shots on target. And Edwin Van der Sar is classic example of that. Despite having inferior reflexes to the like of Shay Given and Brad Friedel he immediately transformed our defence. The silly mistakes that preceded him were gone. Our CBs looked a lot calmer and assured knowing that they had a reliable keeper behind their backs.
For God's sake, he, Vidic and Jonny fecking Evans established the record for most consecutive clean sheets.
Fast forward a couple of years later when he decided to retire and De Gea joined us. Do you remember how shaky they looked at first?
And to me, the defense has never been fixed ever since. This is why it doesn't matter who we bring in, our defenders always look like a joke. Be it Bailly, Maguire, Lindelof, Jones or Smalling(who looks like a different man ever since he joined Roma).
It's a psychological thing. If your defenders don't believe that the GK has their backs, they're going to be stressed out and look like clowns every time the pressure is on. And ironically, every time the pressure was on, our defense looked like absolute clowns.
Kind of like 2001-2005 when we had Taibi, Caroll, Howard and Barthez between the sticks. And to me it's baffling that Ole who witnessed it first hand, doesn't do anything about it.