It’s hard to evaluate how much blame a keeper should take when a team doesn’t play well. It’s easy to criticise them when they make errors, but if the team isn’t scoring goals then that can’t be on them.
Man United have been awful so far this season, and it’s got even worse after the defeat to Newcastle today. Losing 1-0 at St James Park isn’t catastrophic in isolation, but the team’s attitude was shocking and they showed no appetite or desire to create and score goals.
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That hasn’t been lost on David de Gea. He couldn’t do much about the goal and didn’t have a great deal to do apart from that. These comments he made after the game offer a scathing assessment of his teammates:
De Gea: “It is not acceptable, not just this game but the whole season. It is the most difficult time since I have been here. I don’t know what is happening. We cannot even score one goal in two games.” #mulive [bbc]
— utdreport (@utdreport) October 6, 2019
He’s clearly furious at the lack of goals in the team, but the fact he says he doesn’t know what is happening suggests the team have fully run out of ideas.
Defensively the team isn’t actually that bad. They often look shaky but they only tend to concede around one goal a game. The problem is if the team can’t score goals then they are never going to win games.
It will be interesting to see if Ole Gunnar Solskjaer keeps his job after this. There’s an international break so it’s the most logical time to make a change.
They play Liverpool next, if they can’t improve then that could turn into an absolute massacre. Jurgen Klopp’s men will be quietly licking their lips at the prospect of that game.