David De Gea - is he good enough?

Well I haven't seen him a lot but I've still seen several mistakes from him (like one of the goals Dortmund scored against them last season)
 
Keeper's aren't perfect, ever, get over it people. Take the Spurs game, he made a bunch of great saves, the points were dropped because Carrick/Jones did entirely nothing in midfield, Evra was inept in dealing with Lennon(one of the reasons Carrick was so frequently deeper than he should be, covering for a crap crap left back).

EVERY KEEPER ever, in the history of football, has cost their team points. You've won title after title with keepers who make constant mistakes, Bartez, Reina, Lehman(he really was very good for a few years), Seaman, Friedal, Given, Casillas, Ceasar, Valdes, and the list goes on. Utd fans(and others) are harping on as if there are perfect keepers out there who are mistake free and De Gea makes mistakes so will never be close to the best around.

Basically, shut up people, keepers, defenders, midfielders, strikers all make mistakes, no one has a 1:1 goals to shots ratio, no one has a 100% pass completion ratio, no one has a 100% tackling success ratio, no keeper makes every save. He's an exceptional shot stopper, end of, thats it, everything else at that point is a bonus. He may be close to the best shot stopper in the game, you don't need to nitpick over his supposed weakness(as if there is a keeper who is perfect at getting to crosses... there is NOT), adapt your game to minimise his weakness. Have your defenders show wingers inside so they are less likely to cross, have two big CB's make a path for him to come out and grab it.

Football is about playing to a teams strengths and minimising the weaknesses. If you had a proper left back rather than the ever absent Evra, you've have less crosses from that side to contend with.

A better central midfield and left back would have reduced the number of chances Spurs had, not a new keeper. 25 shots, the goal was coming, the reason was the pressure and domination of Spurs because Utd sucked elsewhere, not in goal.


Most importantly, there are few if any better keepers, and even more importantly, I couldn't name a keeper I consider better who is 1, available, and 2, not old enough that it would be a fairly short term fix. You've got one of the best shot stoppers in the game, and he's got potentially 15 years left in his career... go out and buy a 30+ keeper from a team that doesn't want to sell for an obscene amount, or with 15 years to go, improve parts of his game and adapt the team to minimise his weakness, which makes more sense? How much would it take to get Casillas off Real, and how much longer would he play, how much would he want in wages and would he come to England, the answers are, buttloads, not that long, buttloads and no.

A better left back and a better defensive midfielder are much more important, and will help out more than a better keeper. Also worth noting is that, without knowing the stat of longest run he's had with the same CB partnership infront of him... I'm going to assume its both low, and assume that the Rio + Vidic combo has played very infrequently infront of De Gea. Better CB partnership, the keeper can better read when to come and when not to, when its a different pair every other week, and different CB's play differently, and the same CB will play a different role depending on which CB he's partnered with... a more settled back four would also improve De Gea's game as would quite obviously, Fergie picking a number one and sticking with it.
 
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I don't know why anyone bothers buying sub 30 year old keepers in the premiership ;) Everyone buys them for the future and ends up shipping them off while their older vastly more experienced keeper stays in goal.

I've lost count of the superb keepers Everton bought in the last 20 years, only to sell the on while they keep the experience in goal. :D

Manu might as well sell him on with a guaranteed buy back clause when he's 30 ;)
 
I don't even know why this topic is being entertained and I hope Fergie comes out and moans about the press on their witch hunt and puts the rumours to bed.
 
Of course he's good enough! Its only when you have had to watch some truly rubbish keepers people will start appreciating talented ones like De Gea.

United would do well to settle him in properly and get him comfortable as no.1 as he looks good. If they can't they'll make a profit and it wont be the end of the world.
 
so 'red nev' is the greatest football pundit/journalist EVA to united fans .... when he's telling you what you want to hear?

neville is not alone in his thinking. hansen thinks the same and wrote an article about it in yesterdays telegraph.

what DM says is right, it was uniteds defence who were largely to blame by not clearing their lines. ok, maybe he should've done better with the punch that led to the goal, or even caught the cross and thus likely be awarded a free kick due to the pressure he was under from caulker. caulker is a big unit, far more stocky than de gea. couple this with (i believe it was?) evra getting in his way too and it was a tricky situation.

the best saves he made were with his legs, he was essentially beaten and got a tad lucky, especially with the bale shot/deflection.

people need to remember spurs' winner at OT. that was a lindegaard mistake too, essentially. ok it was a powerful shot from bale but it was parried into a dangerous area and we all know the rest.

of course no keeper is mistake free but not every keeper is playing for man utd. imo, lloris could've done better with united's goal but if walker had challenged RVP in the air in the first place, there may have been no need to save. after that, lloris didn't have a great deal to do and walker did make amends by rocking welbeck when he had a good opportunity at the far post. the main reason lloris doesn't have a great deal to do, is because of dembele and sandro or parker.
 
I was baffled as to why we wanted to buy him. I think, young, inexperienced, was what I said at the time and that basically you have to spend years developing him and then he'll want to move back to Spain when he hits his peak.

Should we sell now? Probably not. Should we have bought him to begin with if we wanted an experienced keeper? No...
 
In Van Der Saar's last season at the club Vidic made 47 appearances in all competitions, in De Gea's 1 and 1/2 seasons at the club Vidic has subsequently made 21 appearances, missing Vidic has been huge for us especially at a time when a 20 year old goalkeeper is being brought into the team.

De Gea is 22 now and there's not a defender or goalkeeper at that age that doesn't make mistakes, listening to Gary Neville I think he's spot on De Gea will fill out over the course of the next couple of years and with that should have more of a physical presence in goal, just look at Ronaldo even back in 2006 when he really started realising his potential it wasn't till around 2008 that he really bulked up into the athlete he is today.

De Gea is not anymore prone to errors than Joe Hart is, the difference though is one is after a long time of searching England's big great hope in goal (the first since Seaman started going ropey back in 2002) and the other is this foreign lad playing for Man Utd having been signed for a lot of money. De Gea pushes a shot out and the opposition scores and you have tards like Jamie Redknapp calling him an average goalkeeper, Joe Hart does the exact same and not a word gets said, in fact Joe Hart goes a makes an absolute howler against Sunderland and nothing gets said about that either.

I absoloutly want the lad to be a success but then looking back to 2004 I wanted us to stick by Tim Howard as well....
 
The criticism he gets is often exaggerated but it's got to a stage where the defense he gets from some is too. Yes, Rafael trying to break forward in the 93rd minute and Evra's positioning were at fault and may have led to the situation but De Gea had to do a lot better with his punch. Unfortunately for him keepers will always be under more scrutiny than outfield players because when they make a mistake, it often ends up with a goal.

That said, there's a lot of keepers who wouldn't have made one or both the saves he made but would have dealt with the cross, giving you the same or even a worse end result, and they most likely wouldn't have been blamed in anyway. That's what separates the decent keepers from the top class keepers though - Utd paid what they did for De Gea because they expect him to make the big saves but to also deal with the basics.

He's talented enough but right now he clearly isn't comfortable dealing with balls into the box (even before the goal he made a crazy decision to punch a looping ball that he could have caught unchallenged) and until he cuts those sort of mistakes out of his game, while he'll be better than a lot of keepers he won't be the great keeper he's meant to be.
 
just look at the chances united had to clear the ball or simply drive spurs out of play


there's no way de gea can be wholly to blame. it's simply not good enough from uniteds midfield and defence
 
Joe Hart is exactly the same, Great potential but ALWAYS has a mistake in him.

But he is a media darling because he comes out and says he made a mistake.

I am very happy with Lloris.
 
A few points I see:

He's only 22 so he has youth and inexperience to contend with... two different things that as a goalkeeper can be an issue, the latter more so than the first.

I agree with those saying he has been mis-managed. Switching between keepers doesn't help consistency and communication, or confidence. Utd needed a new number immediately. A 20 year old (when purchased) was surely never going to be that?

Man Utd are 5 points clear, how many points has he actually cost them?

Personally, I'd keep him on the books and and loan him out, at that age he can only improve.

Needs to buff up.
 
Joe Hart is exactly the same, Great potential but ALWAYS has a mistake in him.

But he is a media darling because he comes out and says he made a mistake.

I am very happy with Lloris.

Every player let alone keeper has a mistake in them, it is just more highlighted as a goalie, none are mistake free ever, De Gea is hardly much more prone than a lot just plays for the biggest team in the country and is foreign.
 
Man Utd are 5 points clear, how many points has he actually cost them?

To answer this the answer would be that the game against Spurs was the first time this season a 'mistake' from De Gea has led to us dropping points

Last season the only time a 'mistake' cost us a game was away to Basel when he went for a low cross with his feet and ended up teeing it up for one of the Basel attackers

Apart from that every time he has made a 'mistake' he's got away with it (obviously you can interpret that as he's been bailed out by one of his team mates who have gone up the other end and scored)
 
Looking at that video , that goal is very much Rafael's fault really. Made a pass that was never on and handed it to Tottenham in a very dangerous area with one minute to go.
 
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