The odour of Manchester United is strong and their sticky fingerprints show.
Quite how you are left in such a power vacuum where your first-choice goalkeeper is announcing his own departure on his social media feeds is, as yet, unclear, but we always back them to manage it. No club announcement, no send-off, no warm goodbye. Simply a reportedly withdrawn contract offer and one of the greatest players of your modern era slipping out of a side door.
David de Gea leaving Manchester United is the right decision for both, by hook or crook. He turns 33 in November. He has, of late, stuttered down from a great goalkeeper to a goalkeeper who makes great saves.
But the errors became more frequent, more high-profile and more slapstick. The problem of his distribution and general discomfort with ball at feet was amplified by the demands of Erik ten Hag. If Andre Onana is indeed De Gea’s replacement, it is hard to conceive of two more different goalkeepers at the highest level.
Still, United should be chiding themselves for allowing De Gea to leave without a transfer fee. The accusation is that this club, during the Glazers’ tenure, were perennially reactive rather than proactive. That may now be slightly out of date, but their goalkeeping situation has been an ageing elephant in the boardroom for at least 18 months.
If De Gea wasn’t going to sign a new contract on reduced terms, the time to sell was last summer. He might even have become that rare Manchester United beast: a player bought and then sold at profit.
De Gea’s legacy (and his sheer length of tenure demands that we inspect it) is a complicated one. On an individual level, he was undoubtedly one of United’s greatest goalkeepers and certainly is the one with the most appearances. He arrived as a scrawny, gangly 20-year-old who looked a little doe-eyed and awkward.
To put the journey of his position into some context, the £17m fee was a British record for a goalkeeper, almost doubling the previous figure. This summer, Manchester City are likely to sell James Trafford for more than that before he has even played in England’s top two tiers.
De Gea never promised to change the game, he was a goalkeeper’s goalkeeper, emphatically one-dimensional and yet able to warp that into a compliment. The question marks that surrounded his comfort under a high ball had vague roots in the general mistrust of imports – “does he fancy the long throws, Jeff?” – but also because De Gea legitimately had a flaw in that area that was ironed out. His quick-reaction shot-stopping was exemplary, as was the ability to make himself big when faced with a striker.
It may not rank alongside Manuel Neuer’s sweeper-keeping for innovation, but De Gea became the best goalkeeper in the world at saving with his feet, if not passing with them.
Yet we cannot pretend that De Gea helped bring the good times. Only six players in history have played more games for Manchester United; that sextet won 44 league titles between them and each of them won the European Cup. De Gea won one league title, a decade ago, and one secondary European trophy.
He finished outside the top four of the Premier League more than he did inside its top two. His career turned in August 2015 with the infamous broken fax machine and the failed transfer to Real Madrid. Real promptly won three successive Champions League finals.
None of this was De Gea’s fault, you understand – that is where the weirdness lies. His own form has long been roughly indirectly proportional to United’s own. De Gea was settling in when United were still title challengers and winners, the port in the storm during the post-Ferguson malaise and then, now a new age is in sight, is leaving.
It is a compliment to De Gea that he was named his club’s Player of the Season four times, but not to the club itself. You want a magnificent goalkeeper. You do not want that magnificent goalkeeper to be your star performer.
Ultimately, that fuelled this messy ending. When De Gea signed his new contract in 2019, United had just finished sixth (31 points behind Liverpool in second) and needed De Gea more than he needed them.
The offer made him – according to most reports – the third highest-paid player in English football. It was always going to be the pay cut or the door from then on.
Manchester United may not miss De Gea; not now. This has come to a natural end and he may well take the most lucrative option in the Saudi Pro League. But he leaves with the prickly air of resentment following him.
Tomasz Kuszczak shouldn’t have three times as many league titles and one more European Cup. De Gea was a great goalkeeper who needed a great team. And now Manchester United want to be a great team again, and so need a new goalkeeper.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/g9XfUwp
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