Manchester United will face a number of decisions this summer regarding the future of key players within their squad. Players with big names, who command even bigger salaries, will stand on unfamiliar ground as uncertainty over their futures grow. One noticeable example is David De Gea; a stalwart of the club over the past decade and the best-paid goalkeeper in world football.

De Gea reportedly ‘fears his time at Old Trafford’ may be up, with doubts lingering over his suitability to the new style of football Erik Ten Hag is trying to implement. The modern game has engendered a shift in expectations for a goalkeeper. It’s not enough to be a separate entity to the rest of the team, solely reliant upon your hands to affect the game. Goalkeepers now function as an extra player outfield when on the ball, and a sweeper-like defender when off it. The ability to assertively dominate when facing crosses, and to quickly distribute having won the ball, represents another vital skill. These are all areas, however, where United’s goalkeeper is found wanting. De Gea ranks in the bottom 1% for touches on the ball and bottom 1% for crosses stopped, while he reaches the dizzy heights of the bottom 4% for defensive actions outside the area. Clearly the Spaniard is not hitting the metrics by which football now judges its number ones. This is a view shared by De Gea’s national team coach, Luis Enrique, who has firmly dropped him from the Spanish squad. Enrique’s footballing philosophy was cultivated in Catalonia, drawing upon the same sources of inspiration as  Ten Hag. While they may have individual differences and idiosyncratic applications of similar styles, their demands of their goalkeepers are the same. A demand De Gea seems unable to match.

But does this approach overlook the most fundamental skill of a goalkeeper – the ability to stop the ball entering your net? This is an area in which De Gea has made his name – the elite shot-stopper. Yet this may be even be a department in which he no longer remains exceptional. Last year, De Gea’s saves were widely credited with having helped a dreadful season be even worse,  yet the underlying data reveals a relatively run-of-the-mill performer. In 1v1 duels he ranked in the middle of the pack while his overall save percentage ranked him in in the 67.5 percentile. His ranking in PSxG (how often he should have conceded) ranked him higher, in the 77^th percentile. These are not objectively bad statistics, but they’re not enough to justify a player as deficient in other areas as De Gea is.

Yet it is neither his hands, nor his feet, which are providing his most positive contributions this season; it’s attitude. Ten Hag praised De Gea individually by asserting it was clear how ‘his experience helps us…He organises and leads the back four. [He’s] really important to give the team the right mentality and the attitude to win games.’ Attitude has been a consistent buzzword during many of Ten Hag’s press conferences, with good reason.

The attitude of the United squad, or lack thereof, was one that reared its ugly head multiple times last season. De Gea remained a dignified voice in the aftermath of some of the worst team performances in recent memory, regularly choosing to conduct post-match interviews when others shied away. This professionalism has been noted, and praised, by Ten Hag who sought to install a ‘four-headed leadership group,’ within his new squad. Maguire, Fernandes, Heaton and De Gea represent the foursome entrusted to ‘run the dressing room.’ This newly-formed dynamic is said to have produced an immediate uplift in mood and, more importantly, results. But it begs the question: is attitude worth over £350,000 a week?

United have the option to extend De Gea’s contract by 12 months this summer. It will cost over £18 million to do so. For comparison’s sake, Wolves paid nearly a 1/3 of that last year for José Sá, one of the best keepers in the league last season. AC Milan lost Donnarumma to PSG in the same window, replacing him with Mike Maignan for 2/3 of the price of De Gea’s salary. Maignan went on to win the award for best goalkeeper last year in Serie A. Both men would represent goalkeeping upgrades on De Gea, as well as players far more suited to Ten Hag’s holistic style of football, for fractions of the price a new long-term contract for the Spaniard would cost.

The Brentford game represented an early, but seminal, moment in Ten Hag’s tenure. Permanent personnel changes were made, but also an acceptance that it’s too early in the evolution of this squad to play the expansive football he produced in Amsterdam. In United’s opening two games they averaged 65% possession and 11 10+ passing moves; in the four games after they averaged 42% possession and 6.3 10+ passing moves. The inability to control the ball evidenced against Brighton and Brentford forced Ten Hag to adapt his style in favour of a more direct approach. But this will only be a temporary tactical shift, predicated on the abilities (or, more accurately, inabilities) of his squad.

And it will be the Brentford game that will live longest in the Dutch manager’s mind, with the technical weaknesses of his goalkeeper on display for each of the goals conceded. Brentford’s first was a speculative long shot that De Gea somehow fumbled into the net; their second was his painful inability on the ball exposed horribly; the third his painful anonymity when the opposition launch a ball into United’s box; and the fourth a reminder that one-on-one De Gea is a midtable goalkeeper. After the match the Spaniard bravely faced the media, as he has admirably many times before, admitting ‘I think I cost my team three points today.’ In reality, it might be more accurate to say he’s cost himself a new contract and a long-term future in Manchester.

Darragh Fox