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Manchester United goalkeeper David de Gea has come in for a great deal of criticism again following two poor performances this week.
In the nine shots on target faced in the two games against Liverpool and Real Betis, the Spaniard let in eight goals.
De Gea’s distribution against the Spanish side was extremely suspect, leading pundit Paul Scholes to remark “David isn’t the best footballer let me put it that way.”
De Gea’s manager, Erik ten Hag, admitted at today’s press conference that he “can’t ignore” his keeper’s poor showing.
Comparing De Gea’s passing stats this season in the Premier League with another top keeper, Liverpool’s Alisson Becker, FBRef.com stats show that the United man has attempted far fewer passes (778 vs. 970) and registered a much lower pass accuracy (72% vs 85.7%).
It has always generally been accepted that the 31-year-old’s passing and sweeping are weaknesses in his game, but over the years he has more than compensated for this with his shot stopping, which has been second to none in world football and which has saved United points on countless occasions.
However, a current season stat issued this week suggests that even in this supposed area of strength, De Gea is now lacking.
Some context to the Sanchez/Steele situation.
xG Prevented since De Zerbi came in. Sanchez has prevented -3.4 xG, fifth worst of all goalkeepers. pic.twitter.com/SoH9PFNqMy
— FPL Focal (@FPLFocal) March 8, 2023
According to @FPLFocal, the United man ranks third worst of all Premier League goalkeepers for number of expected goals prevented (XG). These are based on stats from 18th September.
To explain this figure better, FBRef.com show how many goals a keeper has conceded for the season compared to how many goals are expected to have been scored against him.
For the PL season, De Gea has conceded 35, when the XG was 29.7, meaning he has let in 5.3 goals this season that he shouldn’t have.
Becker, by contrast, has conceded 28 when the XG was 36.6, meaning he has prevented 8.6 goals more from occurring than he should have.
Put another way, United’s inferior goal difference this season (+6 vs Liverpool’s +19) could be more than accounted for by the difference in the two keepers’ performances.
In fact, on every main goalkeeping metric, Alisson scores much better than De Gea in the Premier League this season.
source: derived from Fbref.com
With his contract expiring in June, De Gea is currently in negotiations with United about a new deal.
He is currently the world’s highest paid goalkeeper on £375,000 per week.
There has been some talk of him even reducing his salary by 50%, but that would still place him at £187,500 per week (£9.75m per year), considerable more than Alisson’s £150,000 per week.
It would also mean he is still paid more than Gianluigi Donnarumma (£8.5m), Thibaut Courtois (£7.2m) and Ederson (£5m). In fact, he would still be the fifth best paid keeper in the world behind Jan Oblak, Keylor Navas, Sergio Rico and Manuel Neuer (sources: Read Nigeria Network, Spotrac.com).
The question for United and Erik ten Hag right now is, even if De Gea were to agree to such a drastic deal, would his statistics justify that contract, especially as he turns 33 years of age in November?
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