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

He's definitely a club legend. Most cleansheets, record number of player of the years, multiple golden gloves and a number of unbelievable performances over the years.

Don't think he's our best ever. In the time I've been watching think both big Pete and EVS have been better, but that doesn't take away from just what he's done for the club.

Cheers for the memories Dave, hope you're replacement has as big an impact.
 
9 Stone Elvis said:
De Gea playing in 92-00 would be up there with Schmeichel IMO.
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De Gea playing 92-00 would have been physically destroyed by opposition strikers that were allowed to compete and make fairly heavy contact with the keeper, not to mention the higher amount of crosses that would have targeted De Gea's weakness. It was only once keepers really started getting protected (early-to-mid 00's) that he could have achieved the level of success that he did.
 
Top 3 for sure, but mostly due to longevity. As others have said Schmeichel and VdS are a tier above - not just because of their abilities to stop a ball, but especially because they were proper generals of the box, and in some cases even the entire team.
 
MadDogg said:
De Gea playing 92-00 would have been physically destroyed by opposition strikers that were allowed to compete and make fairly heavy contact with the keeper, not to mention the higher amount of crosses that would have targeted De Gea's weakness. It was only once keepers really started getting protected (early-to-mid 00's) that he could have achieved the level of success that he did.
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You're making too much sense for the DDG fan club to handle or even process.

Truly.
 
SirScholes said:
It’s the YouTube generation mate

de gea will have a more spectacular highlight reel

but the other two are greater goal keepers
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Has to be right? I don’t know how you could have watched all 3 and still maintain De Gea was the best and the others were overrated.

Maybe people just feel like they’re being edgy or something? I’ve generally come to understanding that the Caf as a collective aren’t wrong. There are some mental opinions but if most of the Caf are in agreement on a player, they’re generally right.
 
Dwight Corke said:
Best Man Utd 'keepers since the 90s

1. Schmeichel
=1. VDS


3. DDG




4. Beautiful Bald Barthez
5. Sergio Romero
6. Tim Howard
7. Mark Bosnich
8. Roy Carroll
9. Dean Henderson



10. Massimo Taibi
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I remember rating Van der Gouw highly as a second choice. Even played a part in the treble season when Schmikes went on a holiday.
 
Who would I want in goal going into a massive game? Schmeichel without a doubt.
 
Didn’t see much of big Pete. However, I have De Gea comfortably above VDS, who IMO was good, but nothing special. De Gea on the other hand was probably the best shot stopper of all time. He had weaknesses in the air, but shot stopping more than made for them. And the keeper being better with the ball than midfielders is hipster shit that was not relevant until the last 3 years or so.
 
He’s right behind Pete and Edwin, but still a club legend. He was also our best player in an era when everyone else was crap. Was the right time to move on.
 
In a different situation he could well have gone down as our best - an excellent shot stopper who would have been brilliant behind the likes of Ferdinand and Vidic. He's our third best, but can hold his head very high and will go down as a club icon and one of the very few bright spots of the 2013-2023 decade.
 
VDS
Schmeichel


DDG

Old heads could probably put Stepney in there somewhere
 
He's not in that top tier for me, but he's right below it.

There was a stretch of a few seasons where he was good enough to reach that top tier. I think we all remember games we won because of his insane reaction saves.

The fall off the cliff for him was so drastic.
 
MadDogg said:
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.
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Kind of agree with this. It would be interesting to find threads from back then, but my feeling is that by end of 2017-2018 season, in many (most) fans eyes he was easily in the same level as the other two, probably above VDS even. Now, people put him significantly below them.

Stayed too long here, and was here at a time when we were shit. If we had signed him in 2001 instead of 2011, he would have been easily remembered as our greatest keeper.
 
PSV said:
Would have him #1 if he had left a few seasons ago, but a bit like Schmikes he probably wants to forget the last bit(s). Hard to tell with Edwin as he had, by far, the best defenders in front.
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Disagree. Big Pete had a back four of Bruce, Pally, Irwin, and Parker in front of him and later Jaap Stam and the underrated Ronnie Johnsen. Rio. Vidic, Evra and Neville were not far better defenders.
 
scream said:
In my opinion Stepney was better than Dave.
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As was Gary Bailey. Actually, I'd put De Gea in that tier of keepers that we've had over the years. Nevertheless, his longevity and shot stopping ability were superb and when he was the last man, he'd come through more often than not.
 
He was okay, the negative outweighed the positive for me, I don't hold any poison for his time here, I think he's been here for a very weird period.

He was an okay keeper, seemed nice enough until it came to the end and I feel like he was another wage elephant we had to shift. Don't feel like he ever loved us, think it was probably convenient for him for a while, and sure he fell out of love if that love was there in the first place.

He was fine. He'll hang in my memory as a debate and for his longevity.
 
If he would have left this time last year, I would have held him a lot higher. But this past year you could see him wilt with your own eyes. I don't blame him for the FA Cup loss but, he didn't help.

Funny, Valencia went through the same thing. Losing his edge and speed. But I still have fond, warm memories of him. DDG in 2023 just left me cold. I hope that feeling wears off in time. But right this second, I'm relieved he's gone.
 
I'd go with 2nd best I've seen at the club on a regular basis with VDS first and DDG slightly ahead of big Pete. If he could have kept up his peak level of 3 or 4 years ago then he could have been but he's been quite average and sometimes poor since then.
 
Marcelinho87 said:
Nah and I even put VDS above big Pete.
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mshnsh said:
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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Like I said wildly overrated. Schmeichel is regarded as one of the top 3 keepers ever even outside of the Man United fans. Nobody in their right mind would stick VDS in that sort of category - yet here we have it, another example of Manchester United fans getting football wildly wrong.
 
Skills said:
Like I said wildly overrated. Schmeichel is regarded as one of the top 3 keepers ever even outside of the Man United fans. Nobody in their right mind would stick VDS in that sort of category - yet here we have it, another example of Manchester United fans getting football wildly wrong.
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Thats silly take. You may want to read the title again. VdS while at this was more underated than anything. He made some poor career choices to hurt his status outside the club but he absolutely was in discussions for one of the greatest goalies of his time back then.
 
Redplane said:
Thats silly take. You may want to read the title again. VdS while at this was more underated than anything. He made some poor career choices to hurt his status outside the club.
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Underrated how? VDS was never the best keeper in the world. Whatever period of time you'd look at his career - the likes of Schmeichel, Buffon and Cech were just clearly better keepers than him.
 
NicolaSacco said:
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.
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I think we were extremely lucky to have all 3. Hopefully Onana or whoever else is being spoken about with these 3.
 
Skills said:
Like I said wildly overrated. Schmeichel is regarded as one of the top 3 keepers ever even outside of the Man United fans. Nobody in their right mind would stick VDS in that sort of category - yet here we have it, another example of Manchester United fans getting football wildly wrong.
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Sorry to tell you but your opinion doesn't invalidate others.

I liked Schmeichel he was excellent but I have better memories of VDS and he didn't go and play for them cnuts over the road.
 
Big Pete is miles ahead. What a force he was. VDS 2nd. DDG 3rd. His peak was as good, but sadly his floor was so much lower than the other 2.
 
Moriarty said:
As was Gary Bailey. Actually, I'd put De Gea in that tier of keepers that we've had over the years. Nevertheless, his longevity and shot stopping ability were superb and when he was the last man, he'd come through more often than not.
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I’d agree with that.
For some reason Gary Bailey is too often forgotten about.
 
I'll remember him as a great player but not the best we've had in the position. Kinda like Stam, Sheringham, Yorke or Kanchelskis tier for me
 
I think De Gea is the keeper version of Rooney, holds all the records to suggest he’s our best ever and at times won us games on their own but reality is neither of them are and despite being legends of the club their final few years highlighted their massive decline.

As a shot stopper and highlight reel save wise De Gea is the best but as an all round keeper he’s nowhere near either of Schmeichel or VDS, I know now De Gea has left we’ll do that thing we do where we fawn over him but as the game evolved his deficiencies became more and more obvious to the point he was targeted by our opposition.

I’d say De Gea is top three but the gap between the top two (Schmeichel and VDS) to number three is quite a big one, De Gea WAS a great keeper for us and we’d have been worse off without him up until 2018 but I think that broken down move to Real saw us as the losers as it’s been downhill ever since the World Cup that year and his contract along with Alexis Sanchez’s fecked our whole wage structure to the point we can’t move players on.
 
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