Jan 17
Groundhog de Gea
It’s been just 18 months since United found and signed the next ‘World’s Best Goalkeeper’ from Atletico Madrid in the summer of 2011. Is it working out for club and player though? Are United facing the same hunt to fill the Number One shirt again, just 60 appearances later?
If rumours are to be believed, the relationship between United and De Gea is not one made in heaven. De Gea is seemingly ‘homesick’ and United are openly touting new keepers.
I’m not one to get on the backs of players just for the sake of it or because the player is the latest name heavily criticised on the media bandwagon, in De Gea’s case though, I’m accused of it.
Earlier in the week I took to Twitter to bemoan yet another De Gea clanger. “So, another Monday morning, another reason to slate the clown!” to which I was roundly attacked by many telling me I’m an idiot and how De Gea will be the greatest keeper the world has ever seen in a few years.
It’s fair enough I guess, calling a professional player a clown isn’t really the best term to use if you want to make a serious point. De Gea is obviously a very, very good goalkeeper.
However, no matter what language I used the fact remains that I believe De Gea isn’t up to the job now, today, this season, 2013. The common belief that one day he will – makes absolutely no difference to my opinion of what he’s doing on the pitch now.
De Gea seems to split opinion, but one thing the majority doseem to agree on is he will become one of the greatest keepers of all time. But is that enough to trust him as United’s No1 while he gets there?
Personally I don’t think it is. I’ve criticised the club in the past for acting too late on transfers for obvious young talents, Michael Carrick for one. We hesitated with Carrick, let him move to Spurs then paid a huge amount over and above the original asking price to eventually prize him away from there. We should act like we did with Phil Jones and possibly how we are with Wilfried Zaha to bring the best young talent to Old Trafford before they’ve made their mark elsewhere and built up a heftier price tag.
The man between the sticks though is a different kettle of fish. To me the most important position to fill in any team, it has to be filled with quality on the day, not with a view to the future. De Gea was one for the future.
But having said that, I’m not suggesting De Gea isn’t a decent keeper, I just like keepers to catch a ball when it’s catchable, push shots away from danger where possible and physically dominate high balls. De Gea does none of the above. He flaps at simple catches, versus Newcastle and Liverpool he’s parried shots into the path of predatory opponents with little care for the consequences.
Yes the Newcastle one was far worse than the Liverpool one but both similar in design and outcome.
Gary Neville claimed the save vs Liverpool was ‘a good one’ while Peter Schmeichel labelled it a ‘fantastic save’.
Those two well respected figures obviously did me no favours, of course RedRants’ Twitter followers are going to put their (Neville & Schmeichel) opinion higher up the credibility scale than mine and tell me so, but are we living in a world where our opinion must match that of all respected TV pundits? I hope not!
I’m not having anything of what Schmeichel says, it was not a fantastic save. A fantastic save denies a goal and removes the danger. It was a fantastic ‘stop’ yes, but you stop shots in training, on matchday it’s about more than just stopping it. De Gea doesn’t even look like he’s trying to push it away from danger and that’s the most worrying aspect of it for me. Wake up Dave! For all you do well you do something else poorly without thought.
Neville’s comment on the other hand, calling the save ‘good’ and blaming Rafael for his failure to react before Sturridge, I can have. It WAS good, but good isn’t good enough. Rafael switching off of course allowed Sturridge to finish it off, but that’s an entirely separate issue – Rafael does have form for switching off at the back-post though and therefore strengthens my case that De Gea should be aware of this and making every effort possible to tip the ball away from danger rather than just ‘stopping it’.
Footballers and professionals within the game stick together during and after their career’s so it’s no surprise Schmeichel guarded De Gea rather than tear a strip off him. I believe if Schmeichel was coaching De Gea he’d have had words with him privately come Monday morning regardless of his public TV backing.
Being linked with Asmir Begovic from Stoke City and Fernando Muslera from Turkish side Galatasaray amongst others, is proof enough that Sir Alex believes the young Spaniard hasn’t stepped up to the standards he requires, this also adds more strength to my case against those Twitterers who call me deluded and out of order for suggesting as such.
It felt like a strange decision at the time when SAF opted to persist with buying DdG despite his inability to persuade Edwin van der Sar to commit to another year. I think SAF banked on convincing van der Sar to stay thus having DdG in the wings for a season. With that plan scuppered by van der Sar’s decision to quit, it’s a mystery why the deal for de Gea went ahead when others, more experienced and proven options, were available.
Now we’re stuck at another crossroads with a decent shot-stopper who excels with the ball at his feet but struggles with basic goalkeeping skills like catching catchable balls. A keeper who, for all his great performances, could be remembered for all his short-comings and needless mistakes. A keeper who, let’s not forget, who’s also had one eye on the exit door throughout.
Were United right to opt for De Gea in 2011 at such an early age (for a keeper) with an eye to the future, or were there just no outstanding keepers out there bar de Gea at the time rendering the gamble one worth taking? Was it even a gamble in your eyes? It was in mine.
What would you do with De Gea now? Sell him if Madrid (or anyone else) are interested. Sell him to a less glamorous club with a sensible buy-back clause for the future once he has matured and developed into the best in the world? Loan him out perhaps?
Or is De Gea cutting the mustard for you? Do you think he is doing enough to warrant the No 1 spot?
Your thoughts please.
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I cannot believe people are, including yourself, getting wrapped up in the Real Madrid Media hype!!
De Gea is an excellent keeper but he is young and needs time to grow. All the news in the media which is poisoning peoples minds is to make him unwelcome and force the move to Madrid… Simple.
Firstly they came out with, he is homesick, then they came out with he wants to move, then they said that Real want to sign him. Strange series of events. Next you will see a picture in the paper with his mother wearing a real madrid shirt.
Now they have started rumours that we are scouting other keepers, I for one do not believe this to be true, unless of course he is on his way to Real Madrid. Which will be a massive loss to ourselves.
De Gea will turn into a world beating keeper, just give him the time needed to mature. It is our patchy leaky defence that is the biggest issue, hopefully the flood of injuries will sstop and we can get some consistancy back into the back 4. (rafael excluded, he just keeps getting better and better)
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@A True Red: He’s right he’s a bandwagon jumper… The only opinion that matters is Ferguson’s, and he certainly doesn’t share it with journo’s, mindless quacks they are…
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De gea Will be a quality keeper eventually but if we a serious about winning the league and europe this year we need to loan out de gae and bring in the likes of Begovic. I have said this before and got laughed at, but how many goals do we need to concede before we do something. Besides rumour is he is home sick we have more chance of keeping him for the future if we help keep him happy now, he is just a homesick kid after all, do you want to force him to stay and lose him in a few years when he refuses to sign a new contract because he falls out with the club..
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@dave the red: which goal have he made a terrible misstake? A rebound here and there, but that happens to all goalkeeper trust me.
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What a NUMPTY. You do not know anything about football. DeGea made a really good save but was let down again like he was against Athletic Bilbao band Everton with Rafael standing with his finger you know where instead of assisting the keeper. How many times does Rafael stand ball watching. If forwards can anticipate where the ball is going why not defenders.
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@trevor from Northwich: Guess thats the price of the net, Anyone can post on twitter and even chimps could have their own blogs.
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@trevor from Northwich: why are we looking for a new keeper?
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@trevor from Northwich: Rafael didn’t have a change, the player had already started the run from midfield and rafael was therefore overruned. Good goal from liverpool, far from good defending by anyone.
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Sorry mate but you are wrong on this occasion. The save from gerrard’s shot was a great stop. the power he hit it and the fact it went through two bodies made it even harder for DDG and he still stopped it. Yes he pushed it back into the danger zone but I honestly don’t think he could do much more with it. 99% of keepers wouldn’t have even got near the first shot. The Newcastle one he should have done better but not on Sunday. It does seem you have a problem with De Gea and will look at the tiniest thing in great detail just to further back your claims that he isn’t good enough. He is improving week in week out and is catching a lot of crosses now than what he did 12 months ago, proper United fans back their players. I remember a few years ago when people were slating a young ronaldo as he was too fancy. Look how that turned out.
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I find it quite ironic that, if De Gea had got a weak hand on the ball, and it went into the net, it would of just been unlucky, while he makes a cracking split second save when unsighted from the ball, he gets criticised. Furthermore, Rafa was the closest player to the ball after the save. and a little more sharpness at the back would of prevented the goal.
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The only way to gain experience is to gain experience.
The only way he will learn and grow and develop is if he plays games.
He isn’t gonna get there by sitting on the bench.
Yes you can have your own opinions but Gary Neville and Peter Schmeichel have a level of experience and perspective that us mere mortals will never have. They have seen it all. And they saw it while they were in the arena and not from an armchair. So their OPINIONS carry a little more weight than ours.
Football is uncertain. So in difficult to judge situations who’s forecast, who’s judgement am I gonna trust on matters I know nothing about? I will go to the people who have actually been there and done that.
There’s a reason why those TV pundits are respected. Lets not overlook those reasons.
Schmeichel was appreciating the talent it takes to make a ‘stop’ like that. Peter Schmeichel knows that you can teach someone to parry a ball away but you can’t teach them to have those reflexes.
Ofcourse Schmeichel is going to be publically supportive and ofcourse De Gea is gonna get a sharp reprimand come Monday morning. It was a dumb thing to do to block the ball into the path of an opponent and the coaching staff need to sort that out.
But it takes time to inculcate these things into a young player.
Everyone makes mistakes. That doesn’t mean that we must now publically humiliate players for every mistake they make.
And the public support is a reaffirmation that he believes in De Gea and that in time he will get there.
In time De Gea will be ‘experienced’ enough to make the ‘saves’ that are needed on matchday.
De Gea is young. What you’re demanding of him is maturity not competence. Its not gonna happen overnight.
Is he good enough for now? I don’t know. Playing him means we have to make a sacrifice. Based on current form he isn’t the best keeper out there and so we have to make do with a sub-standard keeper.
The rest of the squad will just have to carry him.
So we have adopted a “we can score more than we conceed” approach to our games.
And we’re doing it in the hope that De Gea will repay the faith in him by being loyal to the club. I would hate to see him run off to Spain once he becomes no1 on the planet.
Its a gamble yes. Its a risk. But Ferguson wouldn’t be where he is without taking a few risks. And I don’t think its a risk that has hurt us too badly. We’re top of the log with a 7 point lead. De Gea has been part of that. I doubt that any team can get to where we’re at with a rubbish goalkeeper.
Loaning him out or selling him with a buy back clause would be a good idea. My question with De Gea has always been loyalty. And I have always thought Ferguson is playing him as no1 to buy his loyalty. Sending him off somewhere else might leave De Gea uninterested in returning.
And if he were to go away for a couple years who would take his place? And would that replacement want to step aside when David is ready to return? Would we even want him back?
I just want De Gea will do us a solid and start playing well. Then we can proceed as planned. He isn’t playing too badly mind you.
I say lets stick with the original plan.
I’m not prepared to tear up plan A (play De Gea until he gets it) in favour of plan B (lets find a new number 1) just yet.
I still want to give it until the end of next season (2013/2014) before making a decision on David De Gea. I’m still a David De Gea fan.
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What, i think he has been everything we can ask from a goalkeeper, u need to unstuck ur head from ur arse and start watching him, not the media! (heavily disspointed by this statement)
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I believe the unwarranted criticism of De Gea from the blogger is a mere projection of his insecurity that De Gea will come out with a “dream of Madrid” or something of the sorts where he forces a move back home. I feel slightly insecure that he may want to leave, (weather, family, language), but I still want him to stay with United as long as possible. He is one of the top goal keepers of the league and one of the most precocious young gks in the world.
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Sorry Ian, got to disagree on this. A lot.
De Gea has a huge potential, and let’s not forget he is 22! Yes he had a very rough start, call it having one eye, or flappy hands, or can’t catch a ball, it was a rough start. Totally expected from a keeper that came from a different country to a total league with all this British media pressure piling on him to become the next Van Der Sar.
He won’t become the next Van Der Sar straight away, it just won’t happen because he is still learning and he got what it takes to reach that level otherwise Fergie would have NEVER paid 18 mil for a young goalkeeper. The only other alternative we had back at the time (as far as I can remember) is Neuer, who chose to remain in his home country.
I watched De Gea when he was nervous and blind at the beginning, and to be honest he got to my nerves and god knows how many times I cursed that guy for all the mistakes he made, but when I look at him now he really developed. His aerial saves are much much better, we all know his response is magnificent. Even the accuracy of his long range passes is getting much better (that was a very special talent of Van Der Sar).
What I am saying is, it is really unfair to pile all this pressure on a 22 years old Goalkeeper who came a very long way and proven that he fully deserves to be United’s No.1. Once he matures, trust me we will never look back on this goalkeeper matter. Let’s not forget how long it took Van Der Sar to become the keeper he became at the end of his career.
Most of our players at the back are now ranging from the age of 20 to 23, and they never get this amount of criticism when they make mistakes, I mean not even close! Our defence makes lots of mistakes, and it’s very inconsistent, yet we still keep bashing De Gea as if he is both the keeper the and defence.
About Liverpool’s goal, I don’t think it was his mistake, not for all the reasons you said, but because I’ve seen Casillas do that exact save many many many times and it does get back to an opposition player who scores. If the best goalkeeper in the whole universe now makes the same save, I really don’t think De Gea’s save deservers all this fuss.
We have a great talent in our hands, I pray to god we don’t ruin this guy by piling pressure and criticism on him because this will only make his development worse. And for the love of god don’t loan him! It’s like loaning a young version of Casillas to Osasuna!
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Personally I have some sympathy for De Gea. Van der Sar had the luxury of sitting in goal behind a settled backline of Evra Rio Vidic and Brown all of them at the peak of their games.
Our backline at the moment is a shambles. We field a different line up each week and often featuring raw youngsters such as Jones and Smalling and Johnny Evans who while a fine defender leaves a lot to be desired in terms of leadership qualities.
I remember a similar situation replacing Schmeichel. While the replacements such as Barthez got a lot of flak. They weren’t helped by the fact our defence fell apart after losing Stam.
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DDG will be a decent Goalie at some point in the future, too bad he has to serve his apprenticeship with us!!
I think SAF made a mistake getting someone so young. It’s very unusual to spend that amount on an inexperienced goalie and have him start – he should perhaps go out on loan after all (somewhere in the Championship would be good) and have him come back battle-ready and with a much firmer grasp of Keeping fundamentals.
What he’s good at:-
- Reacting quickly to shots. Very good reflexes up/down and left/right.
- Good awareness of the woodwork. He judges shots with a high accuracy.
- Pretty good kicking game. Seems assured of his skills here, although he could work on his accuracy.
What he’s not good at:-
- Commanding the goal area. Very hesitant to come off his line and catch crosses/corners. He looks scared to death when any big men bully the area and will usually leave it for our CB’s to deal with.
- Does not anticipate long balls hit over the back line. He waits too long to go claim the ball at the feet of the striker and has, on numerous occasions, let a defender try to chase it down (one on one in those situations almost always end up going the strikers way).
- Does not complete a save. We’ve seen, of late, him make decent saves only to be let down by poor fundamentals (push the ball around the post, FGS).
- Command of the English language. I have no idea how he can communicate with Rio, Vidic , Evans, Jones or Smalling with pigeon English. The most important aspect of defending is making others aware of any danger and while this is a 2-way conversation, I wonder how well he vocalizes his commands or understand those from his defenders.
There are those here that say he’s made progress since last season. I beg to differ and it’s probably because he is on the big stage week in and week out. He’s under the magnifying glass and it’s killing his confidence and stunting his growth.
United are competing in 3 major competitions and if we are to have success we have to have a GK’er that we can rely on. In De Gea we have a liability.
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De gea won’t move to madrid , he is an atleticos and he will never betray atleti.
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May I draw everyones attention to the 78th minute v Spurs today.
Why punch that when it’s a simple catch?
I quote: for all you do well you do something else poorly without thought.
What a great game the lad’s had today, but you should be catching that instead of punching it, WITHOUT QUESTION.
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You people amaze me. It`s one thing to stick together and support the boy, but he`s still making the same mistakes, maybe less often, that he was making when he first came. Is he receiving the proper coaching? Van der Sar would have saved the 2 points that were given away at the death, so why should you accept less?
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