At the end of the day last season was embarrassing all round and there were only really two options for player of the season because there were only two players that offered any prolonged periods of reasonable form, one at either end of the pitch, both with their faults as well as their plus points. One won the supporters player of the year, one won the players player of the year. De Gea isn't a goalkeeper I would pick at any level of football because he's simply not my type of goalkeeper. He's not the type of goalkeeper I was and he's not the type of goalkeeper to be successful in any proactive football team due to his limitations nowadays, had he been more willing to work with Hoek earlier in his career that may be different, but we will never know, all we know is that he strongly resisted the integrated style of training (in my view, the correct style of training) and as soon as Hoek was moved on, recommended his old coach to the club who allowed him to return to a far higher percentage of individual work which in turn led to him reverting to being a goal-line goalkeeper which became more evident year on year. Under Mourinho that was acceptable, he was happy with a goal-line goalkeeper because his teams defended much deeper, as we tried to move forward under Solskjaer it became a problem. Solskjaer did turn to Henderson, which yielded considerable on-field improvements in the back end of 20/21 despite two or three high profile errors from Henderson. He caught Covid at the wrong time and De Gea started last season at career-high levels in terms of PSxG, despite conceding 21 goals in the 12 league games before Solskjaer was sacked, which is why he didn't drop him. Rangnick, the less said the better, he said the only position we didn't need to sign a player was in goal while residing over a period that De Gea was massively into the minus PSxG as well as being literally the worst goalkeeper in the league at dealing with crosses and sweeping, so god knows what he was thinking.
I would imagine that Ten Hag would have looked back at De Gea under LVG, while knowing he was in the final year of a contract that rendered him unsellable, and thought that he could work with him for a year. It wouldn't have been my position having watched him week in, week out, but I can understand why he would think that De Gea can play how he wants him to after seeing him those years ago while he'd been working with Hoek, and also considering he brought in 5 players who are likely to be important first teamers throughout the season, maybe he thought that a goalkeeper as well would be a bridge too far or unnecessary use of the initial budget. Obviously, I am no fan of De Gea but I expected him to be better than he has been with the ball at his feet than he has been this season and I've been watching him week in, week out for many years now, so I can completely understand why a manager coming in would have certain expectations despite any statistical analysis. However, it took two games for that opinion to clearly shift, we were very credibly linked with Yann Sommer and Kevin Trapp, the Trapp link being confirmed by the player, both of whom being goalkeepers more suited to Ten Hag's usual expectations for a goalkeeper. They didn't come in and in the subsequent games we stopped playing out from the goalkeeper in defensive areas, and the defenders dropped deeper to offer more protection to the goalkeeper. Are we pretending that is coincidental?
You may well be correct in that "awful" is somewhat strong, it probably is although given his one redeeming factor is that he's supposedly a world class shot-stopper despite only having half a season of world class shot-stopping in the past four and a half years, and as such I don't think he is realistically a choice for a team aiming to win trophies in the future, unless it is for a manager who is happy for his team to sit deep and defend as a tight unit with two aerially dominant centre halves in front of him. Also, just to clarify on the PSxG, I haven't cherry picked it at all, the statistics only go back as far as 2017/18, so I gave the information for the full five seasons available, both good and bad.
I just wanted to respond to this briefly. I'm not saying that only proactive goalkeepers can work or that others are dinosaurs. Goalkeepers who dominate their six-yard box (and beyond) have been around for a very long time, as have goalkeepers that come out at attackers running clean through on goal, these aren't modern innovations like some would have you believe. The major issue, as Thorstvedt has said, is that the defenders and goalkeeper have to be aligned, and we have not had that for a number of years, we have had defenders who want their goalkeeper to come and a goalkeeper who wants his defenders to deal with it. There is a middle ground between a highly proactive goalkeeper and a goalkeeper who stays rooted to his line for balls into the box, which is why the average for a goalkeeper to deal with crosses is a rate of around 7-9%, it's not hugely proactive but shows the goalkeeper will deal with certain types of balls into the box to take the pressure off where required, which is what De Gea very very rarely does. This is where Hoek's training was so important, a cautious goalkeeper can be successful if the defenders are aligned to that methodology of goalkeeping, but if the goalkeeper spends the majority of their time training away from the team, then building up that relationship is difficult. Equally that is becoming more and more difficult with teams playing higher lines and goalkeepers being expected to sweep more often than in years gone by, as we have seen the majority of successful teams over the past 15/20 years have had a goalkeeper closer to the proactive end of the scale than the cautious end. In terms of Jim Leighton's comment referenced, I don't disagree, although I highly doubt he is suggesting the goalkeeper stay completely on his line, rather to take up a position 3/4 yards from goal so that the angles are covered for diving comfortably in either direction and to both force the striker into making a decision and be set & ready for the shot on goal, it's actually something De Gea sometimes does very well and sometimes doesn't because of how predictable he is, because there are occasions where it is better to come all the way out and force the attacker into an early decision. Of course, the extreme opposite of this is Ederson, who often comes too far too soon, which I would say averages out to be no better in terms of one-on-one success; it is a situation where you don't want to be an extreme one way or the other like De Gea & Ederson are because it makes it easier for the striker knowing what the goalkeeper is likely to do.
