When David de Gea walks out at Selhurst Park on Sunday he will move to within 13 games of becoming only the 11th player to reach 500 games for Manchester United. It will be the third time in four seasons that De Gea has been involved in every Premier League fixture and only Cristiano Ronaldo can stop him from winning a fifth player of the year award.
The Spaniard might only have one Premier League title to his name for all those years of toil, but his status as a United great isn’t in question. He has been one of the very few players to emerge from the wreckage of this season with any credit in the bank, but rewind to last summer and it could all have been so different.
For the first time since he established himself as United’s undisputed No. 1, De Gea faced a major challenge last season from Dean Henderson, an academy graduate with ambitions of dethroning the Spaniard.
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Henderson and De Gea shared a similar workload in 2020/21 and at the end of that season Ole Gunnar Solskjaer admitted his goalkeeping situation was unsustainable. Something had to give.
Last summer Solskjaer was edging towards making Henderson his first-choice goalkeeper and the Manchester Evening News understands the Norwegian would have allowed De Gea to leave the club, either on loan or permanently.
De Gea’s £375,000-a-week wages would have made a season as a second-choice goalkeeper untenable and it looked like the curtain was close to coming down on his United career.
But Henderson contracted Covid-19 in July and struggled to shake off the after-effects of the virus. De Gea was required to start the Premier League season and he was an impressive performer in the early weeks of the season, form he has maintained throughout the campaign.
Ronaldo’s 24 goals - and the fact he’s Ronaldo - might be enough to edge De Gea into second in his club’s player of the year vote, but he’s seen off the challenge of Henderson, who at 25 is now desperate for first-team football and the chance to re-establish himself in the England squad.
But De Gea has impressed this season because the campaign has played to his strengths. Only Leeds United goalkeeper Islan Meslier has made more saves than De Gea and the United man is an excellent shot-stopper.
If there is any concern around the 31-year-old it is to do with his distribution and how aggressive he is off his line. The arrival in the Premier League of Ederson and Alisson have changed how goalkeepers are viewed.
Former United goalkeeping coach Eric Steele, who first spotted De Gea playing for Spain’s Under-17s and was influential in convincing Sir Alex Ferguson to sign him from Atletico Madrid, believes he can be a modern goalkeeper.
“I disagree that he’s an old-fashioned goalkeeper, he’s got the ability in possession to pick the passes, play around and play long, but when is he asked to do that?” Steele told MEN Sport earlier this year.
“David has got a side-volley the same, but Man United don’t play the same way, he doesn’t get the opportunity Ederson gets. City suck teams in very cleverly and then it’s one touch out of feet and he can hit that 60-yard ball.
“I can show you clips of David doing that sort of distribution but he’s not being asked to do that because they don’t seem to hit space in behind. He’s got that ability.”
Steele clearly knows his goalkeepers and his punt on De Gea has been vindicated several times over. He will hit that tally of 500 games next season and Erik ten Hag has enough on his plate this summer without axing one of the few in-form players in his squad.
But there remains a feeling that, despite those years of experience, De Gea will have to prove himself all over again under Ten Hag.
The 52-year-old likes his teams to be aggressive off the ball and to play a high line. That requires a goalkeeper who can sweep off his line.
At Ajax Ten Hag generally relied on Andre Onana in goal, a player raised in Barcelona’s La Masia academy and was comfortable with the ball at his feet and taking up aggressive starting positions.
If Ten Hag gets United to click and start playing further up the field then similar demands may be placed on De Gea.
A year on from surviving the closest he has come to the Old Trafford exit door, he might still have to prove himself at United.
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