Recently, Jay Motty rightly argued that while Andre Onana deserves time to ‘bed in’, things in football change quickly, and Erik Ten Hag should not stick by him unconditionally.
This begs the question: does he really have the potential to improve Manchester United?
exit DE gea: the polarising veteran
Sometimes calamitous, often brilliant; United’s record appearance-holder for a goalkeeper will be missed by plenty, while others will say ‘good riddance’.
But times change, and football evolves. De Gea was arguably the world’s best shot-stopper, but was, shall we say, limited with the ball at his feet – and that’s putting it kindly.
The Spainard fell out of favour with Erik ten Hag, and in the cut-throat world of top-class football, that meant only one thing for De Gea; the writing was on the wall.
Enter Onana: A press-resistant powerhouse who pings passes like Pirlo
But despite the billing and a big reputation , it’s fair to say that the new United Stopper has had an underwhelming start to the season.
Onana has shown flashes of the player we saw get oh-so-close to a Champions League winner’s medal at Inter Milan, but overall, he will more than likely be disappointed with his performances so far, particularly with regards to unforced shot-stopping errors leading to goals.
United have endured a rocky start to the season and on the surface, Onana’s team performance metrics look pretty terrible when compared to his predecessor’s.
Stats from https://goalkeeper.com/news-and-media/exclusives/post/onana-data-from-first-man-united-games
But this is a red herring. These metrics are heavily dependent on the performance of his teammates. Clean sheets and goals conceded in the Premier League are closely related to shots on target faced; a metric which is largely out of a goalkeeper’s control.
Looking deeper into personal performance
The below stats are based solely on personal performance and show how likely it is for a team to score both before and after every action a keeper takes. They paint a much richer picture as to the quality of every goalkeeping action.
“These metrics effectively help us definitively answer questions like ‘should the goalkeeper have saved that?’, ‘should the goalkeeper have caught that?’, and ‘should the goalkeeper have come off their line then?”
Dr John Harrison, PhD
De Gea was rightly criticised for his distribution and lack of effectiveness at starting attacks – areas we see Onana thrive in. It’s Onana’s shot-stopping has let him down.
Onana adds more value by preventing opportunities – De Gea by making saves.
Interestingly, the impact of the two keepers has been almost identical when comparing De Gea’s golden glove-winning last season and Onana’s overall time here. They have both been worth 0.05 goals above the PL to United, which is how the other stats are presented too:
The surface-level take-home from this is that Onana has currently been about as valuable for United as David de Gea was last season, and hasn’t made us any worse.
However, think about Onana’s mistakes against Bayern, Brentford, Forest and others. These have blighted and characterised his United career thus far, and have skewed the stats downwards.
These are mistakes that should not be being made by any top-class goalkeeper, and you would expect Onana to rectify this side of his game – fast. His last 2 outings against Copenhagen and Brentford looked much more encouraging.
Whilst De Gea’s limitations prevented him from contributing to a higher ‘overall goalkeeper value’ throughout the season as shown above, it’s not hard to see where Onana can improve.
It’s a been a shaky start for United’s Number 1, and people tend to remember the howlers. But looking deeper into the data should give hope to United fans:
Cut out the clangers and we might just have a star between the sticks.