Every team that won the league had a top class goalkeeper

Abraxas

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I don't think this is entirely true, and it certainly depends on the interpretation of top class. I don't think you have to even be within the top 10 of keepers worldwide within some sides. There's lot of reasons that I'm not sure such a theory makes sense.

What if a teams attack and/or defence are absolutely exceptional? The keeper may not even be in the match very often, or at least to a degree where it doesn't decide a title.

What about if the keeper isn't top class but has a very good season, or at least one where he doesn't make many obvious errors? We sometimes assume being top class means a keeper is great year in year out. For the most part they are, but all players have fluctuations. A decent keeper can have his best year, a top class one may have a dubious one, so does it make sense that such a cut and dry theory can be applied? Being a good keeper still means they are solid, you're not good if you ship soft goals, so although they may not "win" points with miracles maybe they aren't required to in some sides and some seasons.
 

PSV

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Yes that’s right, De Gea has won the league when he was supposedly worse than he is now, great.
Yeah, don't you remember how he was supposedly letting in all shots from far out just because of that Dzeko friendly goal against us?

Luckily for us the other teams in the league didn't know about this.
 

Oranges038

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Joe Hart is the one name that stands out as being legitimately crap. Even though he did have a solid season or two early in his City career.

I’d take any of the rest of them at their title winning best over what De Gea’s produced in the last two seasons, or Henderson last season.
With any of them at their very best, there's no way I'd swap them for DDG or Henderson.

Hart was ok, not even close to top class and his drop off was so severe.

Flowers was about as average as it comes in terms of PL keepers. Who could forget that Collymore goal.

Bosnich was a total disaster at Utd, the league was won because the rest of that team was so far ahead of everyone else.

Lehman was good for Arsenal at times, but he was a total nut job.
 

Kush

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You could put prime Neuer in goal and we still won't win the league as long as we have Solskjaer

De Gea has become just an easy punching bag on this forum, he's declined a lot but far from a liability this forum likes to portray. Furthermore, central midfield is a bigger problem than GK as of now
 

OnlyTwoDaSilvas

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Mark Bosnich was garbage in 99/00. But it didn't really matter since we were miles better than anyone else in the league that year and won it by 18 points. The attack blew everyone away. No chance he was better than current De Gea.

Tim Flowers was a bang average keeper when Blackburn won the league. He wasn't even in the top 3 English keepers at the time, nevermind the whole league. Not close to top class.

Arsenal won the league in 01/02 with a decrepit David Seaman who could barely move, a fairly decent Richard Wright and career 3rd choicer Stuart Taylor all sharing the #1 shirt. Their defence was excellent in the 2nd half of the season.
 

Tom Cato

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You could put prime Neuer in goal and we still won't win the league as long as we have Solskjaer

De Gea has become just an easy punching bag on this forum, he's declined a lot but far from a liability this forum likes to portray. Furthermore, central midfield is a bigger problem than GK as of now
Yesssss, more negativity. Mooooooore!!
 

MadDogg

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You could put prime Neuer in goal and we still won't win the league as long as we have Solskjaer

De Gea has become just an easy punching bag on this forum, he's declined a lot but far from a liability this forum likes to portray. Furthermore, central midfield is a bigger problem than GK as of now
De Gea definitely has been a liability. His atrocious end to 18/19 cost us a CL position, his cowardice (hate using the word but it's applicable for that moment) against Leipzig knocked us out of the CL last season, and he made big mistakes in a couple of the semi's that we lost in 19/20. That's just the mistakes in the big notable matches.
 

edcunited1878

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I think he’s better than what we have, yes. Improved them a lot when they signed him.
That was down to having Kepa has their first choice, a 70M quid GK....the biggest GK flop when transfer fee is considered.

United and any team winning a league, for the most part in recent history going back 7 or so years.....the winning team has to score around 85 league goals.

You cannot challenge and win the league without a high goal output.
 

OrcaFat

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Saying he's better than our current keepers isn't saying much though... As I said, we obviously have differing interpretations of the word. For me, he's a good PL keeper, nothing more.
I suppose the crux is our keepers are not good enough and having a keeper who is “much better than our current keepers” gives you a much better chance. With which it’s hard to argue.

It’s never the case that all positions are filled with world class players; some are more important than others - the spine, gk, cb, cm, cf. DDG used to be “best in the world” in some eyes so it’s understandable that we’ve prioritised upgrades in other positions.

Winning teams usually have a good keeper, of course, but they basically have a teamful of quality (even unfancied Leicester was packed with very good players) so I would say balance of quality in attack and defence is the key. But, sure, a good keeper helps.
 

Dominos

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He was a top keeper eight years ago.

He's not now.
This is revisionism to be fair. During Fergie's final season where we won the league, Lindegaard started 10 league games if the stats I have are correct so De Gea was still getting dropped and rotated after every minor error (destroying his confidence in the process). Lindegaard got injured in the 2nd half of the season which forced Ferguson to stop messing him about but he was far from peak De Gea at that point. Unpopular opinion but he'd have had a tougher time making it here if Fergie stayed as he was refusing to stick with him and let him build up his confidence.

De Gea came into his own in Moyes' season where he was our best player and then firmly established as elite under Van Gaal.
 
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Like loads of people have said, this take feels really revisionist and a sort of circular argument. Cos when a team wins the league we change how we rate a lot of their players.

There's not a massive difference between de Gea/Henderson and Schmeichel/Barthez/Hart/Flowers. If we don't win the league it won't just be because our keepers aren't good enough.
 

hobbers

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Chelsea won the CL with two rubbish keepers.

I don't rate Alisson or Ederson as world class either. They're very good, and obviously excellent with the ball. But they're not close to being in the same bracket as VDS, Cech, Schmeichel, or peak De Gea.

I'd have Kasper Schmeichel, Martinez and Lloris over them for shot stopping and handling.
 

Dan-Utd

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How often do we see a team who has their GK suspended put the 2nd or 3rd choice keeper in and still win the game, I've seen it happen from the PL right down to the Conference Leagues where they can't afford 2 keepers so throw a youth team goalkeeper in.

A solid, hard working defence can make it easy for a goalkeeper to keep a clean sheet and this season with Varane in the back line we shouldn't be giving the opponents too many chances to force mistakes that give away needless goals, once he has had time to settle in of course.
 

roonster09

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We won't win the league until we have great manager, followed by great team. GK barely makes a difference in winning and losing the league.
 

NICanRed

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I think I'm right that we won the league in 2003 when we had Roy Carroll and Tim Howard between the sticks.
 

Suedesi

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He’s been shite for at least two season. Watching him flail at Everton’s first corner reminded me how poor he’s become. Maybe, just maybe, he can somehow get back to his best again this season but it’s unusual for a top player to be so poor for so long, then turn it all around again at his age.

Jury’s out on Henderson. Early signs aren’t good and it’s a big gamble to expect a title-winning season from him.

Thinking about it, the issue is about having a keeper good enough to perform like a top class keeper for one season. You can’t win the league without that. I just think it’s not very likely that DDG or Henderson can pull that sort of form out of the bag this season.
You're right, watching llama these days makes me sad at what he's become - in a different game, different context that first corner could have been costly.
 

TrustInJanuzaj

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I actually agree. I think it’s the biggest issue in this team. The best chance we have is Hendo becoming top class this year, we should have ditched De Gea though because he’s finished here.
 

Siezard

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United has 3 top class keepers. At least better than Arsenal who only has one.
 

padzilla

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Those two were the following season. It was an injury prone Barthez for 2002/03.
It's a huge issue for us at the moment. I can think of only once that not having a proper established top-class number one did not hold us back and that was in 99-2000 when we oscillated between Van der Gouw, Bosnich and Taibi, very briefly. Rome was not built in a day though and hopefully De Gea can rekindle some form but I am starting to be convinced he will continue experiencing a Casillas like decline rather than a Van der Sar style Indian summer.
 

Gio

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Not sure I agree with the views on Flowers. He was really good for Blackburn around 94-96 and selected in the PFA Team of the Season in 94/95 ahead of Schmeichel and Seaman at their peaks. Wonder if ‘only’ being back up to Seaman affects his legacy, because had he came through at any point in the last 20 years I imagine he’d have become first choice for England.
 

Spaghetti

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If you ever want to debate Southgate's managerial credentials, he chose Pickford.
He didn’t really “choose” him. He went with the best of an average bunch; it’s not like Southgate can sign a new goalkeeper. Although Pickford has just broken numerous clean sheet records and won the Golden Glove at a major tournament, so I’m not going to complain about Southgates decision.
 

mitchmouse

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That answers that then.

On a broader point, despite the old "defence wins titles" adage, the truth is attack is typically more decisive. So it wouldn't particularly make sense to me that any one given part of that defence has to be top class as a rule.
I tend to agree in 1998/99, we just knew we could out-score pretty much anyone. that said, I'd give blood to have a Peter S or VDS in the side right now