I think you’re being subjective and incredibly harsh picking him out for performances where he didn’t cost us the game. He was far from the problem on those nights and most people on the night of it happening wouldn’t have picked De Gea at fault. In fact if you take a look back to the match thread at the time I’m sure you’d see my point. The team cost us not De Gea and I believe you are rewriting the narrative of those games to suit this agenda.
What I mean is that I do not see Henderson or any other PL GK repeating two seasons at that far end of outperforming average metrics. Not that a keeper can’t come in and do well. But there is zero chance Henderson walks in and does as good a job this season.
You can disagree but the same mistakes we fear in De Gea are present in Dean. He might appear confident but he’s not infallible and nowhere near Van Der Sarr’s level who was an incredibly experienced GK at the time not someone in their first season in a major league he had already won the Champions League and won an award for being the best GK in Europe before joining United. It’s a complete joke to compare him to Henderson coming to United Id expect better of you.
Dean Henderson has never had to deal with the negative media spotlight. Look at Pickford for England for example. Great season some great performances and all of a sudden the spotlight is on and he crumbled he’s a confident lad and even he struggled. It’s not as clear cut as you’d like to make out.
If you read my actual views you’d note I’m very happy to replace De Gea. I’ve said several times he’s been ok this season but below expectation but again rather than acknowledge my actual views it’s easier to try to paint me as a De Gea lover or someone who has forgotten Ferguson which is also a complete joke.
We weren’t so brutal as to remove a player without a plan to replace them. That’s just stupid and currently Henderson hasn’t proven he’s ready to replace De Gea. He is getting there but not quite.
De Gea hasnt contributed nothing this season or we would not have the second best defence in the league with an impressive recent form of 19 games unbeaten with many a clean sheet.
It’s not a case of stick with the devil you know but a case of you need a WC Gk. Henderson isn’t that. If you suggested Oblak it would be no contest and I’d pay for De Gea’s flights. Players have bad seasons and sometimes a bit of faith is better than casting everyone aside for the next and shinier toy.
Now for what I actually believe:
1. De Gea is performing ok he’s not outstanding and this would concern me if we were losing lots of points because of him or if our defensive record was poor. As it’s not I don’t see a huge issue giving him one more season while Henderson develops.
2. I think a lot of wishful thinking about Henderson has been going on in here and nobody has sought to criticise any of his mistakes yet people are actively pursuing De Gea for things that happened two years ago. I don’t think this is a fair narrative to pursue even if I don’t think De Gea has been good enough compared to his best.
3. Dean Henderson has had one season of top flight football. This does not fill me with confidence that he has the experience to lead and deal with the pressure, scrutiny and craziness of being our GK. Another season like this or a solid performance as our No2 next season and he’d be in a much better position to stake a solid claim.
4. Of course I’m grateful to De Gea for previous seasons aren’t you? But that doesn’t mean I’ll blindly support him if there is a serious issue. I don’t believe the issue is pressing enough to focus on when we need a RW and CB far more than we need to worry about a GK.
Dont talk as if you know the mind of Sir Alex he we the one who signed De Gea and kept faith in him whilst he made mistakes.
Over time, players tend to their means. This doesn't have to be the average of average players, but each player has a career that will tend to resemble a normal curve. Now, a normal curve may be steep (short peak) or wide (longer "peak") but a normal curve is a given. The timing of the peak could vary too, but as you start charting the peak years of a large number of players as well, you will start to see a normal curve in that too, leading to the "typical best years". Sure, there may be the odd exception, but this is the norm.
Now, with DdG, we tend to be absolutely blinded by a 2017-18 season that was fantastic beyond what we've seen from our keepers. His shot-stopping was so good, we actually forgave the fact that his distribution had regressed from an already low starting base and he'd just never worked at all on crosses etc. So, I decided to just look at the wider picture - looking at the data before and after his peak.
From data that is available, it looks like this:
First, the simple metric - the save %; here, you'll observe an almighty spike in 2017/18, but shockingly, there isn't really much to choose from the other years.
| GA | Saves | Save % |
| 2019-20 | 35 | 91 | 72.22% |
| 2018-19 | 54 | 122 | 69.32% |
| 2017-18 | 28 | 115 | 80.42% |
| 2016-17 | 29 | 74 | 71.84% |
| 2015-16 | 33 | 83 | 71.55% |
| 2014-15 | 36 | 93 | 72.09% |
| 2013-14 | 43 | 99 | 69.72% |
| 2012-13 | 26 | 84 | 76.36% |
| 2011-12 | 29 | 102 | 77.86% |
Now move into the xGA numbers. Here, unfortunately, we don't have xGA numbers across his full stint with us, so I'll go with what we do have. Note though that 2015-16 contains 2 GA in games he didn't play. Hence the difference with the numbers above. Still, it's representative, and I can't isolate the data, so I've kept it in:
| GA | xGA | Diff |
| 2019-20 | 35 | 36.01 | 1.01 |
| 2018-19 | 54 | 52.3 | -1.70 |
| 2017-18 | 28 | 43.54 | 15.54 |
| 2016-17 | 29 | 31.62 | 2.62 |
| 2015-16* | 35 | 39.66 | 4.66 |
| 2014-15 | 36 | 39.84 | 3.84 |
Now, this paints a very similar - and almost bleaker really - picture. DdG wasn't a superhuman beast throughout. He was exceptional in one year and above average for the 3 years before - but has been average or below average since. It is, in my opinion, rare beyond measure for a player to hit a peak in one season, then decline to his mean and then regain that prior peak after a couple of years of average performance. I can't honestly think of a player who has done that. I exclude of course, young players who have a breakout season, a lull and then hit their strides. That is normal. Here though, we're talking of a player with a decade of playing experience. Sorry. Doesn't seem likely to me.
Now, to the next point. How then does this narrative of "He's actually only had 1 or 1 and a half truly exceptional seasons" align with the "He's been our PoTS for years". For that, I think we should ask the following and be honest:
1. Did Peter Schmeichel or Edwin van der Sar ever win these? They were absolute beasts. The latter held that clean sheet streak record. They often kept out barrages of opposition attempts in 1-0 wins. So why did DdG win so many and those two not win one between them?
Because as a team, we were horrid all over the pitch. Keepers should not be noticed unless they make mistakes. David de Gea won PotS without winning the Golden Glove most seasons. He's only won the GG once. Yup, in 2017/18. It's just that we were so uniformly horrid everywhere else across the pitch that DdG was the default winner for just "not being utterly crap". The one time we actually had an optimistic and sort of competent season (2016-17), it wasn't him that won. Despite his having a very good season in goal and conceding just 29 goals (I think he missed the GG on the last day of the season in this one IIRC). So no, his PotS awards don't prove he was out-of-this-world brilliant. Just that the rest of the team was crap. That's why keepers don't win the top awards.
2. Could we have (shock, horror) overestimated him in light of who the other keepers were in the PL and his Madrid transfer saga?
Of course there is no objective measure for this - but look at the other keepers in the league during DdG's best years. A declining Cech, Szczęsny, Karius, Mignolet, Hart and Lloris are the main ones that spring to mind. Which of those screams out "great keeper"? DdG was never unanimously considered the "best keeper in the world" outside England / the Premier League. The Spanish didn't rate him, the Germans looked at the Bayern goal and scoffed and so on. Then there was the transfer saga - where every United fan was left just being grateful he stayed. This was followed immediately by his golden period and boom, legacy sealed.
Now, I am not trying to say here that DdG has not been a super player for us and I am not playing down what he's achieved for us either. I am just saying that his peak is done and gone and we will now not see any striking improvement. I don't think it is reasonable therefore to say that we should trust him to regain his peak. It flies in the face of data. He's gone through his peak and not worked on areas that could have enabled him to prolong his stay at the top once the exceptional shot-stopping went. He didn't improve (actually managed to regress) on distribution and stayed as poor as before on commanding even his 6-year box, leave along penalty area. He's not the most vocal and clearly the marshaling of defence is done by the CBs (Maguire now) and not the keeper (look back to EvdS and Schmeichel and contrast).
In light of all this, I absolutely do not expect DdG to be back to his best. The best we can hope for now is just that he doesn't keep dropping a bollock so regularly. Oh and yes, Fergie stuck by DdG through his mistakes? Revisionism. DdG was dropped and there was speculation that he was done. An injury to Anders got DdG back and he'd sorted himself out to an extent.
He could however be said to be a major factor in costing us that PL title. He admits himself that he was close to done and had thought of leaving that season itself. It was his epic save from Mata that turned it around for him - in a game he only started because Lindegaard was injured!
Fergie allowed him a second chance because he was young. He didn't afford such chances to seniors - but did make allowances for youth. And this is where I'll end. By saying that if Henderson and DdG even made identical errors, I'd give more leeway to Dean - because with growth and evolution, he's likely to cut those out, while with DdG, with age and decline, those will accelerate.
1
. Hit it low to the side and he has no chance at all even if he guesses right.
