Five occasions when David de Gea saved the game for Man United on his own
Manchester United beat Tottenham Hotspur 1-0 in the Premier League this past Sunday and one player stood out for the Red Devils was David de Gea. The Spaniard was doing his usual tricks, making save after save to keep a clean sheet and win the game on his own.
Incidentally, this is not the first time that the United keeper has saved them from getting beaten or dropping points in a game. The 28-year-old was bullied when first he arrived at Old Trafford in 2011 for £18.9m. But the way he has transformed himself into a top keeper is something astonishing and impressive.
De Gea has won the Manchester United player of the year award in four of the last five seasons. He is the first player to win that award four times, which shows how much the team relies on him at times to get vital results throughout the course of a season.
Here are five matches where the Spaniard made wicked saves to win/secure the game for his club:
Manchester United 3-0 Liverpool (2014/15 season) – Old Trafford
The scoreline flattered United just because de Gea made seven world-class saves to deny Raheem Sterling and Mario Balotelli, then of Liverpool.
He denied the former when the score was 0-0 and 1-0 for the home side, which signifies the importance of the saves made. Imagine the Merseysiders scoring the opening goal, the game would have certainly taken a different turn.
Arsenal 1-3 Manchester United (2017/18 season) – Emirates
Well, how Arsenal scored only once in this game still baffles everyone. The Gunners had 33 attempts on goal, 16 on target and de Gea made 14 saves that night, which is a Premier League record.
Almost half of those saves were defying the general conventions, which helped the team to play on the counter and exploit the defensive weakness of Arsenal to score three goals.
Tottenham 0-1 Manchester United (2018/19 season) – Wembley
After a first-half where United dominated the game and deservedly took the lead, Spurs came back well in the second half. The home side had no shots on target before the break, but accumulated 11 on target in the second period.
But it was this Spanish wall again, who was determined not to concede a goal and that remained the case. A couple of those stops were just outrageous, to say the least.
Manchester United 1-0 Young Boys (2018/19 season) – Old Trafford
The goalkeeper only made one save in this game but how good was that! United struggled to create chances in a game they had to win. At the other end, Young Boys almost scored a goal from Ulisses Garcia’s shot deflected towards the bottom corner. However, de Gea defied conventions once again to claw the ball back from the line.
We can quite vehemently say that majority of the keepers wouldn’t have saved that, just because the deflection made it ever so tough.
Had United conceded a goal, then they would have had to score two to qualify for the knockout stages of the Champions League. That would have been so difficult as they were labouring to create clear-cut chances.
Manchester United 2-1 Everton (2014/15 season) – Old Trafford
This was the game where Everton had more shots on target than United but couldn’t get past de Gea. When the score was 1-0 in favour of the home side, the Spaniard saved a penalty from Leighton Baines by reading the direction of the spot kick early and diving in the right way.
But the save he made in the stoppage time when the score was 2-1 was just out of this world.
For all its worth, Brian Oviedo thought he had snatched a point for the Toffees, only for De Gea to spring towards the ball and make a flying save. That stop alone was worth two points.
Verdict
There are many other instances when David de Gea saved United from dropping points. But the above-mentioned games were where the Spaniard was simply superhuman.