I know he received a lot of stick, but in the last few games he is the one who has won it for us for me Outstanding saves. Kept us in games Amazing what a run of games can do for confidence, and it seems the defence are playing for him and protecting him My man of the match
Reina seems to have known what he was talking about. Out of interest, which club do you think Reina will move to in the summer?
Not sure if you are on the wum here, but I think Reina looks like a man who has had enough. Wouldnt suprise me at all of he went abroad somewhere. Looks average at the moment
Since the turn of the year he's been excellent, I think it's just taken him abit of time to settle in. It was a big move for a guy who was only 21, so no suprise he had a few dodgy moments early on
Not on the wind up. He gave Liverpool another season as the new owners convinced him that Kenny was the man which clearly he's not. Reina has won the World Cup and European Championships (albeit as a non playing squad clown). He's 30 this summer, he won't waste any more of his career at Liverpool.
I think the issue at the moment would be which of the top clubs (worldwide) would take a punt on him. He has not looked the player he is (at one time I wanted hm at UTD). I think a lot of LFC players will look at where they are at this summer, I would I have a sneaky feeling though that Kenny may not be around next year. He will use the 'I have stabilized the club' get out clause. He may even be 'pushed' in that direction after the spending and suarez debacle A lot may depend on the FA cup
I think Kenny will quit this summer. He's a quitter by nature and, as you say, he will use the excuse that he's stabilised the club and won a trophy. The fact that they are going to finish even further behind the champions than last season will be overlooked by the Scouse faithful as they think Dalglish is a genius. I wish they'd make him manager for life.
I think a lot of the improvement has come from a greater understanding with his defenders. In the early games you could see they expected him to be like VDS, coming for every cross and dominating his area. As the season has worn on, the centre backs have realised that he isn't that dominant on crosses yet, and are thus making more effort to deal with them themselves which has taken the pressure off him. We saw it a couple of times in the game yesterday - De Gea was thinking about coming for a difficult cross but the defenders (and even Rooney at one point) dealt with it anyway rather than take the chance. That's definitely a good approach for a young keeper - let him come for the easy crosses to build his confidence up until he's taking the difficult ones as well. Worked for me when I used to play in goal back in school.
I watched the game yesterday as a neutral and I remember turning to my mate when Rooney scored the header to put you 1 up and saying that if De Gea had of done what Friedel did (started coming, backtracking, caught in no mans land) he would of had a right media bashing. Just shows how much pressure the kid is under.
irdan The fact that Evans and Rio are looking more settled and composed in front of him must be helping too. Taken from the Guardian today, which is a balanced view; Sir Alex Ferguson may be the greatest manager of all time but he has never been shy when it comes to proclaiming the importance of luck. Napoleon would certainly have approved of Ferguson's generalship. The catalytic signing of Eric Cantona came about because Howard Wilkinson made an inquiry about Denis Irwin. Ferguson would have lost Roy Keane had anybody in the Blackburn office stayed late at work on a Friday evening. And the Treble-winning partnership of Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke came about by chance. Ferguson got lucky again at the start of February. David de Gea had played in only two of the previous nine games, making costly mistakes against both Blackburn and Liverpool. Then Anders Lindegaard was injured. It meant that Ferguson, who surprisingly appeared to be losing faith in De Gea, had no option but to play him. De Gea responded with the save of the season, from Juan Mata, and has been in outstanding form ever since. He earned United at least two points, maybe all three, at Norwich last weekend, and made a deceptively brilliant save from Jake Livermore's deflected shot on Sunday when the score was 1-0. There is a perception that De Gea has cost United a lot of points this season. It doesn't really stack up. While he was culpable in their departure from the Champions League and FA Cup, he has only really cost them a single league point with that mistake against Blackburn. He is certainly in credit, having made a series of exceptional saves in matches at Stoke, Liverpool, Chelsea, Norwich and now Spurs. He has also shown admirable dignity and resilience, the sort most of us can only dream of, in the face of media bullying. De Gea still struggles with crosses and set-pieces and certainly does not radiate security. Nor should he: he is a 21-year-old playing in an intimidatingly alien environment and in a position where maturity usually isn't reached until the thirties. At the age of 21, Peter Schmeichel was playing for Hvidovre and Edwin van der Sar was sitting on the Ajax bench. The surprise is not that De Gea has made mistakes; it's that he has not made more. He has given plenty of demonstrations of his raw, rare talent. No Premier League goalkeeper will have a better portfolio of saves in 2011-12. When it comes to shot-stopping, DDG is dead, dead good. It's probable that he will be guilty of another cock-up or two before the end of the season; it's certain that he will earn United more points with saves that take the breath away. Ferguson knew this when he identified De Gea as Van der Sar's replacement. In that sense, he's not lucky at all.
Great post there Tuckers Even more impressive that DDG has performed so well with Vidic in front of him to command the defence as he does so well.
