De Gea feeling heat

BRING in Dean Henderson, they said. Give David de Gea some competition, they said. It will bring out the best in Manchester United’s increasingly erratic goalkeeper.

That plan looked rather flawed after a quarter of an hour of the season here at Old Trafford.

De Gea, sporting a new cropped hairdo for the new campaign, was presented with his first chance to pass the ball out from the back in the sixth minute and played it straight to James McArthur. Harry Maguire scrambled the ball clear and it would be wrong to say it contributed to Crystal Palace’s first goal moments later as the move started deep in the visitors’ half.

No doubt, De Gea was badly let down by his defence when Tyrick Mitchell played a pass down the right flank. Jeffrey Schlupp evaded Victor Lindelof to get in a cross and Luke Shaw had lost track of Andros Townsend who aimed a shot back across the keeper. It was not an effort the Spaniard should be expected to save and he did not despite getting a hand to the ball.

Eight minutes later, De Gea nearly cost United another goal. Palace pumped the ball forward and the hapless Lindelof did his keeper no favours with a weak header under pressure from Wilfried Zaha. De Gea was still a clear favourite to get there first and Zaha backed out of the challenge, but the United man c o mpl e t e l y fluffed his clearance with an unconvincing waft of his boot. Had the ball fallen differently, Zaha had an open goal.

As starts go, it was not the best in response to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s decision to install Henderson as No2 after a loan spell at Sheffield United to keep De Gea on his toes. Solskjaer claimed on the eve of this game that the level of goalkeeping had gone up a notch in training, and De Gea produced the save of the match at the end of the first half when he instinctively thrust his right arm into the air to turn over Jordan Ayew’s shot.

And he produced his first penalty save in more than four-and-a-half years when he kept out Ayew’s weak effort in the second half, only t o be pull ed up by VAR f or encroaching before Zaha converted the retake and then scored again to make it 3-1 to the visitors.

But there is more to this job than shot-stopping and De Gea still looks like a keeper with mistakes in him.

Henderson is not as content as Sergio Romero to sit on the bench, and he is expected to make his senior debut for United in the Carabao Cup at Luton on Tuesday.

‘There is potential in Henderson but I’m not getting carried away at all, it’s a million miles away from thinking he should take De Gea’s place,’ said Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville beforehand.

De Gea has had worse days, but Henderson is an ambitious young man and will sense an opportunity.