DDG: Over 400 apps for our club. Legend status! Was he the best we've had? Shoot!

No, of course not. Not individually and also not as a team. He is comfortably behind our 2 best keepers
 
Best I've seen at United. I think he was better than VDS - who's wildly overrated because of the crap that came before.

Schmeichel is a different beast all together with his legacy in football.
VDS was for me better than Schmeichel. He was better on the ball therefore more suited to the mordern game and had a calming effect on the defence. At everything else, they were about equal.
 
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Best I've seen at United. I think he was better than VDS - who's wildly overrated because of the crap that came before.

Schmeichel is a different beast all together with his legacy in football.
:lol: you are kidding right?
 
I am a bit divided on this tbf. Definately the best shot stopper we've ever had. Unbelievable reflexes! Lacking a bit of courage and rubbish (for some unknown reason) on penalties.
I'd put him as no 2 after big Pete
Above VDS?
go to bed mate you’ve had a mare here
 
He's not above vds and schmeichel.

He has longevity over others but that's partially cancelled out by the big high profile blunders. Of course every keeper makes a mistake (id say vds made one in the CL final loss to Barca)
But I also think if we had a consistent manager / better owners, he would have been gone around 2018/19 at least meaning less than ten years with us
 
He is behind Schmeichel and VdS and it’s not close either.
 
I don't have a particular order, but I do think he belongs in the same tier as Schmeichel and van der Sar. All of them gave the club top performances for a long time and it was a pleasure watching them. David's highs were as good as any goalkeeper I can remember, but of course, he struggled early on and also regressed in his later years at the club. But he was pure world class between 2014 and 2018 in particular, and 545 appearances for the club is nothing to sneeze at either.
 
Distant 3rd

Behind The big Dame,who made the art of goalkeeping look ordinary.

And VDS who had an excellent organisational skills that made every defensive unit in front of him look better as a unit
 
Surely his longevity helps though, VDS wasn't with us that long
Longevity should only count in terms of top level / one of the best discussions if it is SAF, Giggs or Scholes like longevity, which means competing/winning big trophies (PL or CL) at the highest level until the end.
What good is longevity if you have not been good enough for the highest level for several years and the last big trophy you won was 10 years ago?
 
Our third greatest keeper of all time so an amazing servant to the club!

Big Pete is still my fav United keeper. He could do everything and won pretty much everything even with little old Denmark.

No shame in been behind arguably the greatest keeper of all time and VDS though.

The best shot stopper is arguable tbf. Maybe he was but Schmeichel pulled off some insane ones in his peak at times and was a far more intimating prospect 1on 1.
 
Good luck in your future career DDG. Time is right to move on though. If not for a dodgy fax machine he would of left years ago.
Big Pete, Edwin, DDG for me.
 
Good luck in your future career DDG. Time is right to move on though. If not for a dodgy fax machine he would of left years ago.
Big Pete, Edwin, DDG for me.
Myth, never existed
 
Great at his best, brilliant even, but he was never at Schmeichel’s level. Debatable about VdS.

it’s not, out of the 3 VDS average save % is in the 80s then Big Pete then De gea low 70s
Then add to that the greater organisation from Schmeichel and VDS, then add to that the throphy haul.
 
Brilliant keeper and servant to the club, defo not the best we have had but still top 3/4
 
David's a legend, no doubt about it.

Not sure where I would rank him with Schmeichel and van der Sar to compete with. They all had their pros and cons, plus to be fair to de Gea, he's been at the club far longer than the other two.

Unfortunately, it is the right time for him to go. The club should have acted on this before the end of the season and made his final game at Old Trafford dedicated to him with a warm send-off from the crowd. Expect nothing less from United these days!

All the best for the future, de Gea!
 
Was great but he's still behind Schmeichel and Van Der Sar
 
DDG has a better highlight reel, but VDS always felt with him it was more calm and under control.
 
He’s behind Schmeichel and VDS. Not sure it’s particularly close either.

De Gea pretty regularly made saves that VDS (especially the 2005-2010 version) could only dream of. But in literally every other aspect of keeping De Gea was comfortably inferior.

What I don’t know is how you’d even go about weighing those off against each other. I don’t think there’s a measurable statistic in football that could make that kind of assessment.
 
3rd behind VDS (My favourite) and Schmiechel, no doubt. Legend all the same though. He was second only to Neuer in his prime, and that was close.
 
DDG was a world-class shot-stopper but his commanding of the box is much to desire. I blame the goal-keeping coaches for trying to coach him to be decent. I remember with LVG, DDG passing was good he has regressed. However, he wasn't able to try to collect the ball and was always static when the ball crossed which has caused the team a lot of issues.

Schmeichel will be the best and then comes VDS.

VDS may not have made these spectacular saves but I believe that's because he had good positioning something I believe DDG lacked. Further to command the defense. He was mute. DDG will be 3rd due to his longevity.
 
VDS's organizational skills and calming effect on the defense (in addition to all his obvious strengths as a GK) make him the best of the three for me.

Watching the same defenders play with Kuszczak, Foster, or even DDG behind them - night and day difference.
Allison is probably the first keeper after VdS that I feel makes the goal half the size for attackers.

Just such a good keeper.
 
Time to be a right bastard and start an argument; the number of appearances doesn't make a legend. Winning trophies and shining in successful teams does, as does being a true representative of the club on and off the pitch.

For all of De Gea's appearances he earned one league title, an FA Cup medal and the Europa League. He was never a leader for us and I struggle to think of what he did off the pitch either. In a couple of years whenever I think of him I won't go "what a legend". I'll just think "Oh yeah, he played in goal for us for years".

Good luck to him in his future and I wish him the best, and I'll miss seeing him in goal, but legend? Setting the bar a little low, surely.
 
If all keepers had the same standards to reach then De Gea is up there with Pete and Edwin, the problem for De Gea is we went to shite and then we changed the parameters of what we need a keeper to do. Reflex saves wise he is up there with Pete. Distribution wise people forget how good Pete was with his throws to Giggs and Andrei that created so many counter attacks.

De Gea playing in 92-00 would be up there with Schmeichel IMO. Barthez was a clown at the time, would probably be the best in the world right now.....
 
Surely his longevity helps though, VDS wasn't with us that long
I'd say De Gea's longevity actually hurts him, seeing as his last five seasons were quite poor. In fact if you look at his career here as a whole, he was only particularly good for 50% of the time. He struggled in his first season, then had six good-to-great seasons, then struggled again for another five. If he'd left after 17/18 or at most one or two seasons after that he could have really pushed VDS for second (Schmeichel is clear #1), but his significantly lower level just went on far too long that it has to hurt his standing in these types of comparison. VDS never had a poor season for us. Schmeichel was somewhat poor in the first half of his last season.

I think it's also important to stress that we're really only talking about keepers in the modern era. The vast majority of us here never saw any of the keepers who came before.
 
Big Pete in particular and VDS for me standout in my lifetime. Im a bit young to remember Gary Bailey.

De Gea third but I do wonder how he would have performed with the likes of prime Rio, Vidic, Evra and Neville in front of him.

Perhaps we'd think him better than VDS had he played in that team?
 
I made a thread on this in 2016 and most people were convinced he was the best. I think he’s behind both Pete and Edwin but marginally.

Surely that isn't true. "Potential" to be the best if he'd kept his best form up for many a year after maybe?

It's an odd one for me.
People forget the seasons where even rival fans decried him the best in the world, and that without him we'd be midtable etc!

Yet you can probably find 30min youtube compilations of some absolutely horrendous errors, mostly starting after that terrible World cup, that just seemed to utterly annihilate his confidence.

Last season itself was an odd one, some great saves, but some critical clangers.
 
it’s not, out of the 3 VDS average save % is in the 80s then Big Pete then De gea low 70s
Then add to that the greater organisation from Schmeichel and VDS, then add to that the throphy haul.
Firstly, stats only show pieces of the puzzle. Secondly, DDG had longevity on his side - winning four player of the season by both fans and players. I preferrrd VDS personally, but it is still debatable.
 
Big Pete in particular and VDS for me standout in my lifetime. Im a bit young to remember Gary Bailey.

De Gea third but I do wonder how he would have performed with the likes of prime Rio, Vidic, Evra and Neville in front of him.

Perhaps we'd think him better than VDS had he played in that team?

That's a key point that one.
He's career here has incorporated some pretty poor spells and dodgy defensive combos for a while.

Although it was the period we were conceding tonnes of shots that allowed him to show his saves, so it works both ways.