De Gea, who many have referred to as Sir Alex Ferguson's parting present to the team before the Scot retired at Old Trafford, made history at United immediately, becoming the first goalkeeper to ever win the Sir Matt Busby Player of the Year award in 2014 after an outstanding season.
De Gea's individual game grew as the Red Devils faltered. Foreigners like Daley Blind, Marcos Rojo, and Eric Bailly found it difficult to mesh with domestic players like Phil Jones and Chris Smalling, and De Gea frequently had to step in to shore up United's flimsy defense.
The Spaniard continued to excel, winning the Player of the Year accolade three more times in 2015, 2016 and 2018.
Moving forward to this season, it initially appears that De Gea is just as significant as ever. During Erik ten Hag's first season at Old Trafford, the goalie did not miss a single Premier League minute and easily captured the Golden Glove award.
However, Red Devils supporters would be the first to confess that this time, the majority of his 17 clean sheets were the result of his defense, as the Spanish international frequently drew criticism for his mistakes and erratic performances between the United sticks.
De Gea is not a natural with his feet and has not entirely adapted to his manager's new dynamic style from the back, unlike Liverpool's Alisson and Manchester City's No. 1 Ederson. The pay-off used to be that he produced a highlight reel of incredible stops to make up for his lack of distribution, but this facet of his game has considerably diminished.
Unfortunately for the 32-year-old, his followers' and Ten Hag's perception of him going into
De Gea ranked sixth among goalkeepers this season when only shot-stopping performance was considered, as opposed to other goalkeeping techniques like cross claiming, sweeping, kicking, and throwing. However, his other performances have statistically underwhelmed him.
Additionally, the Spaniard had three obvious mistakes in the Premier League this season that resulted in goals.
Any save likelihood north of 90%, according to the data specialists, denotes a significant goalkeeping blunder.
In May, when West Ham defeated United 1-0 at home, he made a mistake that allowed Said Benrahma to score the game-winning goal. In contrast, had he not made the humiliating error of carrying Josh Da Silva's long-range goal against Brentford in August, he would have been
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