I don't care about his ambition nor any United fan should. All we should care is what is good for United and whats not.
De Gea contract talk | Signs new deal
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You should care about the ambitions of the club and players leaving because of ambition is an indication that the ambitions of the club are not where it should be
I think he will sign the new contract.
Wonder what is the hold-up anyway, if he really wants to stay?
If we were in De Gea's shoe, being offered a new contract which gives us 150k more per week than our current salary, I think we'd like to sign it as soon as possible to have new money flowing in right now. But may be that's why I'm not a millionaire like De Gea.
Well obviously ambition is good for United.... If I care about the club I care about its ambition.
This genuinely baffles me when people say it.
You realise that he's not the first footballer in history to be negotiating a new contract whilst still having to perform don't you?
How is the contract negotiations an excuse for those string of errors?
(Ive asked the question so many times that I'm almost bored of it but nobody has ever really came up with an answer so why not go again).
If he, or any player, can't put thoughts about something like a new contract to the back of their mind for a few weeks and concentrate on the job at hand, which at the time was getting us champions league football, then that's a massive failure on their part and not an excuse.
I genuinely cannot think of any other scenario where a footballer's errors (and there were many) were basically excused because by fans because they think he should be getting paid more.
As I said before, is it any wonder we end up massively overpaying our players when fans have this attitude?
I can understand your first point in bold. I'm just saying that I believe the contract negotiations are why it happened, you can argue that he should have been able focus while the contract negotiations were ongoing but it happened and not everyone is able to concentrate fully when they have other things going on in their mind.
Last season is gone now and I'm convinced that next season he will be back to his best and think he fully deserves our backing next season. Regarding the second point in bold where you criticise my opinion, like when you previously criticised my opinion, I 100% respect your opinion but don't agree it. I am not of the opinion that we should just play any player stupid money but in my opinion De Gea is worth it.
If it was some mediocre player who hasn't given us such immense service over the years, I would not be having this conversation with you. I think we should just focus on next season and get behind him. The first response you gave to my comment was on the subject was
So by this it seems as if you are suggesting De Gea is bang average. Are you calling him bang average?
Not everyone, fair enough, but surely a professional athlete should be be able to, particularly one that people claim to the best in the world.
In fact, it's a pretty basic part of the process, the more difficult thing is having the ability to perform.
Having the motivation to do so, is, as I said, surely a basic requirement at the top level.
So, by this theory, if he has some other off-field issue that comes up this season, e.g. interest from PSG or Real Madrid, you're fine with him costing us points in big games again? It's understandable?
Fair enough, there are times when a players off field issues could be used an excuse, for example, personal/family troubles, but I personally don't think 'contract negotiations' falls into the excuses category.
Thats why, as I said, when this theory gets used I'm genuinely baffled by it and I can't think of any scenario where that has been used as an excuse.
I wouldn't go as far as saying I thought he was bang average, but, I do think he is massively overrated and have done for years.
I wrote quite a long piece explaining why I thought so a while back, I'll repost here and hopefully get your thoughts because, likewise, I respect your opinion too. We both have the same motivation, wanting this club to be the best it can be.
This was the post :
It used to take an ability to look beyond shot-stopping to notice that David De Gea might be overrated. Surely now though even his biggest fans must have doubts that he's the man to build our defence around and get us back to the top level.
I personally think giving him a new contract would be a massive mistake.
Let me attempt to avoid the usual accusations first of all by pointing out that this nothing personal against him, it's not an agenda, it's not a wind up and it's not me saying 'I told u so'.
I have no problem at all with De Gea's personality or professionalism, he seems like a really decent, down to earth lad, and if some of the other players had the same attitude then we'd be in a much better place.
This is purely a critique of his footballing ability and nothing else.
This is a passionate Man Utd fan who is giving an honest opinion on why I think De Gea was/is so overrated in the first place and why I think it's our number one priority to move him on NOW (that's if anyone else wants him at this point).
I have been saying ever since we signed De Gea that he's not a top level goalkeeper.
In his first season at least, that actually was the general opinion on him.
We conceded so many goals in his first season from crosses and set-pieces because he simply wasn't commanding enough in coming out and claiming crosses/set-pieces and wasn't vocal enough in organising the back four.
I'll be honest, I hadn't seen much of him playing for Atletico in Spain but, at this point, I was concerned that maybe he just wasn't cut out for the physicality of the Premier league.
Alex Ferguson obviously agreed as he was constantly taking him in and out of the side (unfortunately his replacement at this point, Lindergard wasn't much better).
In his second season, he undoubtedly got better, however it wouldn't have been that hard to improve on his first season.
In fact, I honestly think this improvement was slightly exaggerated, we still conceded over 40 league goals in this season, it's not like it was down to our solid defence that we won the league, it was mostly down to the signing of Robin Van Persie and us just going out and out-scoring teams.
However, the feel good factor of winning the league, combined with a 'slight' improvement masked over our continuing problems in defence and overhyped our keeper.
The Moyes and Van Gaal eras, now this is where the 'hype and over-rating' went into overdrive.
The Moyes era was that bad (not blaming De Gea for this BTW, Moyes was a disaster in his own right), and we went from perennial champions to a mid-table side practically over night, that literally the only good thing we had to cling onto that was that our keeper made the odd world class save (as every Premier league keeper does from time to time).
The fact is, we had enjoyed almost 20 years of success, during which our keepers never really had to make that many saves, (although Schmeichel or VDS would have been much more capable of doing so anyway even if they had of been IMO) so this was all new territory for most fans.
We were watching our team get totally outclassed on an almost weekley basis now that us fans were coming away with no other positives apart from De Gea making the odd decent save (most of which were largely irrelevant as we didn't win anyway).
As I said, I honestly think this was the start of the 'hype and over-rating', because despite making a few great saves there was still no major improvements in equally important aspects of goal-keeping such as, as I said, being vocal/organising, coming out for crosses, distribution or coming out of his line. To this day, he still hasn't really improved on any of this.
A side note at this point, all throughout this time and since, I have tried, to no avail, to point out a quite unbelievable habit he has of sometimes not even bothering to attempt to save shots at all, instead choosing to simply watch the ball fly past him into the net (sometimes wide or over thankfully) before throwing his arms up in frustration as if to say 'what could I do?'.
Em, try and save it, maybe?
Fair enough, there will be the odd shot that you never had a chance at saving but you could at least try, no?
Plus, if you're the best keeper in the world, as people keep telling me he is, then surely he actually might save a few.
So, just to be clear, despite his reputation steadily growing over the Moyes/Van Gaal era, I personally still felt he had too many other flaws in his game to be considered 'top level' and certainly not 'the undisputed best' as many claim.
The inability to sense danger and come out of his line to clear or at least narrow the angle on 1 v 1s became really apparent to me during the Van Gaal era.
Van Gaal initially kept trying to play a high defensive line which meant we were often getting caught out with one long ball over the top.
Im not solely blaming De Gea here either BTW, it was probably a bad tactic anyway by Van Gaal but it didn't exactly help matters when De Gea was totally inept at sensing this danger and often just stayed rooted to his line.
Watch the highlights of the infamous 4-0 Mk Dons or 5-3 Leicester defeats for a few of the many examples of this.
His recent performance for Spain against Croatia in the nations league suggests he hasn't improved at all in this regard.
Again though, throughout both of these eras, there was little else to shout about aside from the odd decent De Gea save.
The Mourinhio era.
Not much chance of a high-line or attacking football here so this is probably when he was at his peak for us.
Whenever we were camped into our own box playing 'park the bus' football, then yes, this suited him because he didn't have to come out for crosses or off his line as much.
Plenty of clean sheets in this era but surely a big factor in that was how defensive we were playing, so is that what we should go back to then? Accept that we cannot take risks or press high because our keeper is so inept at coming off his line and reading the danger?
I personally would just rather try another keeper to be honest than watch those Mourinhio tactics ever again.
So these 4/5 seasons when he was our talisman, our player of the year and so on and so on.
What exactly did we achieve apart from mediocrity?
Is that his level then?
The biggest thing we did do in this era was win the Europa lg (and more importantly claim a champions league place because of it) and he had no part in that.
Even during the David Moyes era, he let us down at the most crucial moment with a horrific mistake against Sunderland in the league Cup semi final, we were seconds away from the final and he gifted Phil Bardsley an equaliser with an absolute howler.
I personally don't care that much about the league Cup and I'm not for one second suggesting that this was the sole reason David Moyes failed, but still, we would have played Man City in the final and who knows what could have happened.
It certainly would have been a huge moment for David Moyes, having never won a trophy, but De Gea denied him that by bottling it when it mattered.
This season then, when, for the first time since the Ferguson era, we were gaining momentum, playing good attacking football again and then boom, all that momentum was lost when Granit Xhaka had the audacity to put a slight bit of swerve on a shot and De Gea decided to move out of the road of it.
Much like the Wolves game that followed, and the game yesterday, we were bossing the match when he made those howlers, and even one win in any of those would have seen us comfortably in the top 4 now.
We would be lauding Ole as a genius, and now because of those individual errors people are saying he's out of his depth.
For not dropping him, maybe he is to be honest.
Even today, all im hearing in the 'mainstream' media is how Ole was right to stick by him the last few weeks.
How exactly?
He's stuck by him the last few weeks and his individual errors have cost us points in massive games so surely it's now a fact that he was wrong to stick by him, and it's too late now anyway, top 4 is gone.
In these big games then the last few weeks, arguably some of the biggest we've had in years, when we were playing at the elite level (Barcelona) and also being given the chance to return to the elite level by getting top 4, he's bottled it.
This was the time to be our leader, our talisman and he wasn't up to it, in fact he was so bad, he literally cost us the games, how is that acceptable?
You can clearly throw in the world cup with Spain in the summer also as another elite level balls up.
Ive heard all the excuses over the years but this latest one about the contract is utterly ridiculous by the way.
Even if his head is all over the place due to the contract issue (which there is no actual evidence for apart from the media telling us that's what's happening), how is that a viable excuse?
If he can't put that to one side, until the end of the season and concentrate on the job at hand, i.e. getting us top 4, isn't that a massive concern rather than a viable excuse?
To be clear, I'm not trying to say that the keeper is our only problem, not at all, but I am suggesting that it's our biggest problem right now.
I say that because, when it comes to the other problems in the squad, which for me, is average players such as Young, Smalling, Jones, Fred, Lingard and, more often than not, Pogba and Lukaku, people are aware of how ineffective they are.
When any of the above have a bad game, they get criticism for it (rightly) but when it comes to De Gea, all he gets his excuses made for him and, unbelievably, sympathy now because he's not getting paid enough apparently. Why is he excused? surely De Gea has to shoulder the blame like everybody else who underperformed?
If it's our defence that's a big problem right now then isn't he part of that defence?
Obviously I accept that perhaps our defenders are just that bad, I totally accept that that's a possibility however surely the debate has to be had now that De Gea isn't exactly helping them.
Can it just be a coincidence that literally every defender we have signed, since De Gea became our keeper, has struggled?
All of these defenders were decent prospects when we signed them, where they not?
Even Smalling and Jones were highly rated young defenders when we bought them.
So, are we just accepting then that it is indeed pure coincidence that, to a man, all of the defensive players we've signed in the last 8-9 years have been bad players?
That they've all had successfull careers up until we've signed them (and in some instances like Michael Keane and Daily Blind, after they've left also) but then they have all just coincidentally became bad defenders the moment they signed for us, pretty big coincidence if that is the case.
Another reason I consider this to be our biggest concern is because, as I have said along, it's not even De Gea's shot stopping that is the issue here, its all those other aspects of his game that's the main problem. So, even if he does get his confidence back and actually manages to save a shot (imagine) then, so what? All those other weaknesses are still there and, just like his shot stopping, aren't going to get any better with age.
For a while I just gave up trying to point this out because I got tired of hearing the same excuses, but the last few weeks have really just taken the piss, and, at such a crucial moment in the clubs history, with this rebuild coming.
I'm asking our fans to have a long hard think about this, do you really feel as though De Gea can be relied upon to build a solid defence around for the next five/six seasons and take us from mid-table mediocrity to mixing it with the elite again?
Evidence so far would suggest he's not, but knowing our club I can pretty much predict what is going on to happen.....
We will probably beat Huddersfield and Cardiff and De Gea will make a decent save and, despite the fact that's its too little too late, he will be hoisted back up there and proclaimed to be the best in the world again, then follows another five years of mediocrity with our £500,000 a week liability leading the defence.
Is it any wonder we're becoming the laughing stock of the football World?
When our fans, the mainstream media, our players and even our manager, respond to evey mistake the keeper makes by repeating that there is still 'no question' he is the best keeper in the world and 'no question' that he should be starting, then I consider that a pretty big problem.
For me, the questions have always been there, and are now more relevant than ever.
This is such a crucial summer for us and I think our fans need to properly assess the situation before casually throwing about phrases like 'unquestionable' and 'best in the world', in my opinion, its precisely that sort of complacency that lead us to the mediocrity we now find ourselves in.
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I can relate somewhat your point in bold, as I think it is fair.
Regarding the point relating to PSG or Real Madrid, I give not give him the benefit of the doubt for lapses in concentration. If the situation happened again. Like you mentioned in the example I wouldn't be fine if his head was somewhere else and he cost us points. I am willing to give a decent player the benefit of the doubt for having what I consider a blip season once but I don't give the benefit of the doubt twice and if that particular scenario was to occur it would make extremely agitated.
If 'any' player had family issues I would give them leeway but I think if someone does have a family crises that I think maybe they should explain the situation to some the manager and try take some time out to deal with the issue if possible if it is serious.
Regarding the first point in bold I may have misinterpreted what you meant, although I respect your view I disagree that he is over rated. I personally think that shot stopping is the most important attribute for a goalkeeper. I am glad that we share the same view regarding your second point in bold.
Thatk you very much for sharing your previous post. It has some valid points of which you make a good case for.
Regardless of last season, I still think he is the right man to build our defence around. You give valid points of why you don't rate him which I respect. When we first signed him as a youngster from the Spanish League I had reservations on whether he was going to make it here and agree that he could be more vocal. I agree that this is an important summer, in my opinion one of the most important in our recent history and I fully realise this rebuild is going to take more than one summer transfer window I don't want us falling even further behind and have an even greater task of catching up with the top teams and challenging for major honours.
Are you suggesting that he looks better to some people than what he actually his as he has to save so much and that if Schmeichel or Van Der Sar had to save that many shots that it would make De Gea look lees of an accomplished keeper or am I mistaken?
I think that although we have achieved mediocrity with him being out talisman that we would have finished a lot lower if he hadn't been between the sticks due to his shot stopping ability. I think that Chris Smalling and Phil Jones were sensible at the time as both were doing well at their respective clubs. Regarding Phil Jones I think he is a liability due to him charging like a bull he is likely to get carded to hurt either himself, his own player, the opposition or all three.
I know although hid distribution is not the best as I stated above I hold shot stopping higher than anything and I think poor distribution won't affect us so negatively if we have got defenders playing it from the back rather than Smalling hoofing it forward at any opportunity.
What is think the problem with a lot of fans is that De Gea is so good at shot-stopping that they expect him to save every shot and when he doesn't save one it gets highlighted more as that is the strongest part of his game. Like I've said I think it's a blip but if it is complacency there is no excuse. No player in the whole world in any position should become complacent in my opinion, if they start getting complacent either they sort it out or it's time to leave.
tldr
Do I smell a briefing?
Good to see the papers all on the same page when it comes to the salary.
350K a week?
We must sell him. Now.
We must sell him. Now.
He's simply not worth that money IMO, but on the other hand the club's biggest problem right now is attracting decent players, rather than not having the funds to sign any. Might as well spunk it on him I suppose.
jesus... each post in this thread is giving De Gea more money - he'll be on 1 million a week in ten posts time
If somebody in this club deserves it, it's DDG. He have won more points to us last ~5 years than anybody else.
Good. Pay the man whatever he wants!
Best signing of the Summer so far. People have short memories but he’s easily the best GK in the World
He deserves it more than anyone else at Man United.
I bet Dean Henderson may be regretting signing his extension.
I bet Dean Henderson may be regretting signing his extension.
Some peoples memories are very short. De Gea has handled himself professionally despite the constant rumours and has never publicly expressed a desire to leave! He loves the club clearly and deserves every penny he could potentially earn.
He does not deserve it, he was already one of the highest paid goalkeepers in the world and already earning what he more than deserve. Now with his mediocre to bad season get to be the highest paid player in the team, it is a stupid and will destroy the the spirits in the dressing room. I hope this will be straw that breaks fecking Ed's back. FFS he is not even the first goalkeeper in his national team.
How will it destroy the dressing room ??
He won't even be the highest paid player in it and given that he is our only world class player it is his worth.
Henderson hasn't signed one yet, unless I've missed something? But Henderson will get plenty of game time when hes ready.
Exactly, people forget 8 years in one month.
Imagine the appearance fee on top of that wage.
Guess he won't be extending if that's the case
Guess he won't be extending if that's the case
A top class midfielder and a world class striker and we are back in business!!
Keeping De Gea after fax gate was a bit like when we got Rooney to commit in 2010 after flirting with City.
This time around I fear it could be on a par when we gave Rooney another big fat contract in 2014.
Genuinely think it’s a massive risk.
Even if he can regain his shot stopping ability the rest of his game is non existent.
This time around I fear it could be on a par when we gave Rooney another big fat contract in 2014.
Genuinely think it’s a massive risk.
Even if he can regain his shot stopping ability the rest of his game is non existent.
Great news if true.
Agreed on both counts. People keep saying that he "deserves it", but which top club operates sentimentally? None of them, players are rewarded for their current and future contribution, not the past.
If DDG truly finds his prime form again, I'll be the first one to apologise... but if we give 350k/w to DDG version we've seen last season, it's going to be a huge problem. A goalkeeping Alexis Sanchez situation.
Lets hope for the best, because in-form Dave is probably the best pure shot stopper in history.
Keeping de Gea is nothing but great news. He's going to go down as a United legend and arguably our best ever goalkeeper, though not the most successful (due to matters out of his control). The best goalkeeper in the world over the past 5 years, some loss of form last season doesnt change that. He'll be back to his best this season.
Insane money, he better be on form and make less feck ups next season or we will once again look like idiots.
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