Browsing Tag

David de Gea

Player and Goal of the Year?

UPDATE (05/25/2023): Casemiro did it again, scoring the opener against Chelsea and then playing a beautiful, Magic Johnson-esque no-look, line-splitting pass that set up United’s second goal. United ended up winning 4-1 to clinch Champions League football for next season. Next stop: The Sir Matt Busby and/or Players’ Player of the Year Trophy?

If there were any doubt that Casemiro has been Manchester United’s player of the season, he erased them on Saturday.

Showing an impressive bit of skill that you’d expect more from someone like Ronaldinho or Neymar, Casemiro scored on a beautiful overhead kick, leading United to a important 1-0 win at Bournemouth that put them on the brink of qualifying for next year’s Champions League.

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We’re Not Going to Blow This, Are We?

After back-to-back 1-0 league losses, Manchester United’s Top Four aspirations are hanging by a thread. United need three wins in their last four matches to be certain of clinching a spot in next year’s Champions League.

It’s certainly doable. United have three matches left at home, where they’re the Globetrotters, as opposed to the road, where they become the Washington Generals. Their matches at home are all pretty winnable, with Wolves, Fulham, and a shambolic Chelsea set to visit in the coming weeks. Their road match, on paper, is also winnable, as they’ll get 14th place Bournemouth.

Then again, they’ve looked so toothless and impotent in their last two matches that nothing looks like a gimme at this point.

Against Brighton, United couldn’t convert their chances ultimately got held scoreless by a team that has flummoxed them all year. In fact, the last time United managed to score against them was in August, when Alexis Mac Allister put it in his own net in Erik ten Hag’s first match in charge.

On Thursday, a late Luke Shaw hand-ball doomed United, allowing Brighton to beat David de Gea from the spot with nearly the last kick of the match (surely, a bit of revenge for Wembley — also an eerie parallel to what happened in 2020, when United were awarded a penalty after the final whistle blew and Bruno Fernandes converted it for an unlikely 2-1 win).

Then, on Sunday, United, once again, failed to convert their chances and were doomed by a David de Gea a howler. De Gea, who has committed a league-leading four errors this season that have led to goals, seems determined to lose out on his contract extension, but it’s not all his fault. Anthony Martial, Jadon Sancho, Antony and Wout Weghorst have been erratic all season, and Marcus Rashford hasn’t been the same since his groin injury. You can’t even blame the defense, which is being held together with duct tape and Krazy glue right now.

So here’s hoping fifth-place Liverpool can do us a favor and drop some points down the stretch. Let’s see, they play Leicester and Southampton on the road and Aston Villa at home. Dammit. Guess we’ll have to see what our guys are made of.

Asleep at the Wheel

Never let it be said that Ole Gunnar Solskjær wasn’t the ultimate company man.

When Manchester United finally decided to sack him as manager after a series of humiliating losses and poor performances but didn’t want to use that terminology, Solskjær went along with the charade and said that he was “stepping aside.” He even gave an exit interview with ManUtd.com that was full of platitudes and niceties. He even managed, with a straight face, to deliver lines like “It was time for me to step aside” and “I’m going to leave by the front door” even though everyone knows he’s being shoved aside (and deservedly so, but that doesn’t mean he should have to swallow his pride or continuing taking one for the team on the way out). I can only imagine what Louis van Gaal or Jose Mourinho would have said to that. Probably a two word phrase that starts with the letter “f” and ends with the word “off.”

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The Manager Formerly Known as the Special One.

Manchester United sacked Mourinho on Tuesday morning before training began. Club legend Ole Gunnar Solskjær has been named caretaker manager for the rest of the season, whereupon the club will appoint a permanent manager – maybe Mauricio Pochettino of Tottenham, ex-Real Madrid boss Zinedine Zidane, or Mourinho’s BFF Antonio Conte. Or maybe someone else. Who knows?

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The Strongman Cometh

The common refrain about Jose Mourinho teams is that the good ones always have a strong spine.

At Porto, he had a spine that comprised, mainly, of Vítor Baía, Ricardo Carvalho, Costinha, Deco, and Hélder Postiga. During his first go-around at Chelsea, he added Carvalho and Didier Drogba to the already-strong Petr Cech-John Terry-Claude Makélélé-Frank Lampard based spine he got from Claudio Raineri. At Inter, he inherited a fantastic defensive spine and added playmaker Wesley Sneijder and hitman Samuel Eto’o to provide the goals. His best Real Madrid team was held up by a spine that consisted of eventual nemeses Iker Casillas and Sergio Ramos, as well as Pepe, Sami Khedira, Xabi Alonso, Mesut Özil and Karim Benzema. The spine for his second Chelsea go-around (Thibaut Courtois, Terry, Gary Cahill, Nemanja Matic, Cesc Fabregas, Diego Costa) was so strong that it helped power the team to another title win following Mourinho’s dismissal.

Now, with Matic’s defection to Old Trafford, Mourinho finally has the kind of spine that can rival those of his best teams.

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The Manchester United Perennial Transfer Targets XI

For certain players, being linked with Manchester United has become a semi-annual tradition. Some players have been on the verge of joining United for so many years that you wonder whether media outlets merely have templates that they trot out every few months where they just fill in the name and price.

In fact, you can make a pretty good team with all of the players that Manchester United have been linked with in the transfer market over the last few years. Some ground rules: I looked at longevity of the rumors and gave preference to players who are still currently linked to the club (sorry Cesc). Also, I disqualified Cristiano Ronaldo, Paul Pogba and Gerard Pique and other ex-United players because it’s only natural for them to be linked to their former team.

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Super Dave

“Is that skinny kid with the bad alpaca-like facial hair the guy we just bought from Atlético for £18 million?”

I got to see one of David de Gea’s first starts for Manchester United. I went to watch United play Barcelona in Washington, D.C. during United’s pre-season tour of the United States in 2011. The match took place several months after Messi, Villa, Xavi and Iniesta dismantled Sir Alex Ferguson’s last great United team in London during the Champions League Final. The 20 year-old, rail-thin de Gea had just signed for the club to replace United legend Edwin van der Sar, and he looked like an overgrown tuft of grass standing in his green kit on the Fed Ex Field turf.

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