The De Gea conundrum: is a new contract for the Golden Glove winner a good idea?

When David de Gea leaves Manchester United, he should be considered a club legend.

The 32-year-old goalkeeper has 190 clean sheets in 543 appearances for the club, winning one Premier League title, one FA Cup, one Europa League and two League Cups across 12 seasons.

In many campaigns since the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson, it has fallen to De Gea to bail out a number of shaky defences in front of him.

He has won four Player of the Year awards at the club — more than any other player. Football fans may have different definitions of the term “world class”, but for the last 10 years at United, many observers agreed that De Gea was a rare example of a United player performing at a rarefied level.

His 2017-18 Premier League season remains one of the finest displays of goalkeeping ever seen in the competition. De Gea set records for the most saves made in a single game (14 away at Arsenal in December). and his club finished the league campaign having conceded only 28 goals when expected goals had them at 39.

United finished second in that season. Had De Gea been swapped for a league-average goalkeeper, they could have finished as low as fifth.

A goalscorer can turn glimpses into goals. A goalkeeper as good as De Gea in 2017-18 turned would-be Europa League contenders into a top-four finish. He won the Premier League’s Golden Glove award for the most clean sheets in a Premier League season — keeping United’s opponents scoreless in 18 games. He would head into that summer’s World Cup regarded as one of the best goalkeepers in the world.

De Gea will win another Golden Glove award this season, having kept 17 clean sheets so far in 2022-23. However, he is perceived much differently now than he was when he won his first accolade.

De Gea was Spain’s number one goalkeeper at the 2018 World Cup, but that tournament saw the beginning of a slow decline that saw him left out of Spain’s squad for the 2022 tournament. Luis Enrique believed David de Gea to be an inferior goalkeeper to Unai Simon, Robert Sanchez and David Raya. The latter pair play in the same league as De Gea for clubs below him in the league table. (Roberto De Zerbi has dropped Sanchez from Brighton’s starting XI for his own goalkeeping reasons.)

De Gea’s current £375,000-per-week contract ($463,000) at United makes him the highest-paid goalkeeper in the world and the highest-paid Spanish footballer. It expires on June 30.

United want to extend De Gea’s time at the club but want the goalkeeper to agree to a pay cut first. Erik ten Hag has been clear in his desire to keep De Gea, even after an error that resulted in West Ham beating United earlier this month.

But is it wise to extend the contract of a goalkeeper who is behind Brighton and Brentford’s goalkeeper in the pecking order for his national team? Does De Gea’s Golden Glove award for 2022-23 show there is potential for further growth at United under Ten Hag?

Goalkeeping is the strangest position to quantify in football, with good goalkeepers marrying physical bravery with intensely high levels of mental exertion. More than just shot-stoppers, a quality goalkeeper must possess good communication skills to organise their defensive unit and a collection of intangibles that can be easily recognised but is hard to quantify.

A goalkeeper is sometimes a boxer, sometimes a mathematician, sometimes a public speaker, and sometimes a poker player. A good save from a goalkeeper is like the punctuation at the end of a sentence. The words in the sentence give you all of the information needed, but the punctuation determines the context around things that should be read.

Consider the following sentences:

David De Gea has won the Golden Glove award for the 2022-23 season, making him the best goalkeeper in the Premier League and worthy of a contract extension. 

David De Gea has won the Golden Glove award for the 2022-23 season, making him the best goalkeeper in the Premier League and worthy of a contract extension!

David De Gea has won the Golden Glove award for the 2022-23 season, making him the best goalkeeper in the Premier League and worthy of a contract extension? 

Since its conception in 2004-05, the Golden Glove has gone to the goalkeeper on the title-winning side on seven occasions out of a possible 19. (Ederson and Alisson shared the award in 2021-22). Every goalkeeper strives for clean sheets, but they are not always a straightforward indicator of goalkeeping quality. The De Gea that will win the 2022-23 award is different to the De Gea in his 2017-18 pomp.

“For him, the goalkeeper is essential in the start of the build-up, even under the highest pressure,” said Ajax goalkeeper Remko Pasveer of his former manager. Ten Hag may talk up De Gea in public, but he is aware of his goalkeeper’s weaknesses in build-up, and often tasks De Gea with kicking long against opponents who can press well. It is not an ideal situation for the United manager, and one that will continue for as long as De Gea remains his No 1.

Yet Ten Hag’s ability to balance his long-term desire for creativity with the immediate requirements for winning are to be applauded. If he can surround him with proper protections, he may continue with De Gea in goal in future seasons while prioritising upgrades to his squad in more pressing areas of need.

In late 2020 we wrote of how De Gea had gone from a goalkeeper who covered up the many failures of United’s defence, to a player who needed his back line to help cover his own weaknesses. De Gea is unlikely to become better with his feet in a summer pre-season, but the presence of Lisandro Martinez can make his difficulties when in possession less apparent.

De Gea might not ever be a sweeper-keeper or someone who can claim crosses, but if Ten Hag wants to prioritise transfer funds into another centre-back or central midfielder in the summer, then the need for the Spaniard to push up is reduced. De Gea does not have a convincing record for saving penalties, so then it will fall into the players in front of him not to give them away, or let games drift towards shootouts in cup competitions.

De Gea might one day feature in a United team that can give him everything he needs to perform at his best. That same team might view the goalkeeper as more of an inconvenience than an asset. Context around the goalkeeper remains key.

Ultimately, David de Gea remains very good at making saves, so the context around his story at United remains mostly positive for now. In an impressive season for United, he has proven himself useful once again. Time to bow out on a high? Or proof he still has plenty to offer?

(Top photo: Matthew Ashton – AMA/Getty Images)