I'm better than DE GEA in one area - ONANA blast FABRIZIO ROMANO during sky sport interview

I’m better than DE GEA in one area – ONANA blast FABRIZIO ROMANO during sky sport interview

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Man Utd: Comparing David de Gea and Andre Onana’s Premier League stats

The stats show one clear winner…

Andre Onana

HIGHLIGHTS

Onana has had a shaky start at Manchester United, with the team conceding 10 goals in just five games and keeping only one clean sheet.

Comparisons between Onana and De Gea show that De Gea had better passing accuracy and long pass accuracy, but Onana has made more saves per game.

While De Gea was a brilliant shot-stopper in his prime, it remains to be seen if Onana can live up to expectations and help improve the team’s performance.

Andre Onana has endured a tough start to life at Manchester United after replacing David de Gea, who had spent more than a decade between the sticks at Old Trafford. The Spaniard departed the club earlier in the year after his contract expired, and he is still yet to find a new team.

Some sections of the Man United fanbase had become more and more vocal about their discontent at the Spanish shot-stopper’s inability to play the ball out from the back effectively. These supporters believed the 32-year-old was holding the team back under Erik ten Hag, with the Dutch manager expecting his team to be comfortable playing the ball to the goalkeeper, and the keeper to be comfortable receiving the ball.

Following a masterclass in this side of the game during the Champions League final, Onana was identified as the man to come in and take De Gea’s place. Ten Hag had an existing relationship with the former Inter Milan goalkeeper dating back to the time the pair spent working together at Ajax previously.

Manchester United’s Andre Onana

The 2023/24 Premier League season is still only in its infancy at the time of writing, with only five games having been played. All has not gone according to plan so far for Manchester United’s new keeper, however.

Onana’s shaky start at Old Trafford

There are only two clubs in the entire division that have conceded more goals in the league this season so far then United, with the Red Devils shipping 10 goals in only five games. This means that Onana averages two goals conceded in each match, with only one clean sheet being kept against Wolves.

In contrast, De Gea won the ‘Golden Glove’ award in his final campaign with the Manchester club after keeping an impressive 17 clean sheets over the course of the 38-game season. While it may be an unfair comparison due to the difference in performances from the team as a whole – with United starting the 2023/24 campaign in extremely poor fashion – Onana certainly hasn’t covered himself in glory at times.

Having been deemed lucky to have not given away a late penalty in his Premier League debut, his second Old Trafford appearance saw an unusual attempt at saving a Taiwo Awoniyi shot, as the Cameroonian effectively sat down and allowed the Nottingham Forest striker to place his shot into the gaping right-hand side of the net.

Andre Onana reacts after conceding the opening goal

A late goal from Declan Rice saw Arsenal steal all three points from Ten Hag’s men with Onana’s attempts at saving the effort proving to be in vain as he could only help the ball into his own net. In the most recent league defeat, a Joao Pedro effort brushed the fingertips of the United number one on its way into the back of the net.

It’s not only the league that has seen the struggles of the United keeper either, with his Champions League debut for the club seeing Bayern Munich find his net on four occasions. Onana was also unable to deny a tame effort from Leroy Sané, as the shot deflected into the net via his palms.

Bayern Munich Vs Man Utd: Andre Onana Makes Terrible Error For First Goal

What areas of the game does David de Gea excel in?

Using data from Squawka, we carried out a comparison between the two goalkeepers to see who comes out on top with De Gea’s 2022/23 season used and Onana’s 2023/24 season so far also brought into the equation. While the Spanish player has a larger sample size to pick from, each metric was measured on a per 90 basis to keep things as fair as possible.

It would perhaps come as a shock to see that for the most part, De Gea was more effective with his passing last season than his successor has been so far this term. His passing accuracy is slightly lower – at 68.33% – but he attempted (13.7) and completed (5) more long passes the Onana per 90 minutes. This doesn’t take into account that the new keeper likes to play short passes rather than going long, but De Gea’s long pass accuracy of 35.96% is significantly better than Onana’s 23.64%.

Manchester-United-David-de-Gea

The data also shows that United’s defence may have had more structure last season as they faced an average of 1.1 long shots on target per game, in comparison to 0.8 per 90 this season. This will go some way to explaining the reason behind De Gea having a better record of saving these shots from outside the box, but only marginally at 0.9 compared to the 0.8 of his replacement. The overall save percantage is another metric in which the Spanish keeper shows up very well with a success rate of just over 70%. This is more than Onana’s 66.67%.

Where does Onana excel?

While the expectation may have been that the incoming goalkeeper would be a revelation with the ball at his feet when he was brought in during the summer, it has not necessarily been the case as Onana has struggled with longer range passing as already mentioned.

Footage of Andre Onana in Manchester United training session goes viral

Despite conceding more goals on average than his predecessor, the 27-year-old has still saved more shots per game with an average of four in comparison to De Gea’s 2.7. This indicates once again that Onana isn’t performing behind a strong defence at the moment with the club’s keeper making more saves, but also conceding more goals.

The stats show that so far, Onana has faced an average of six shots on target per 90, with 5.2 coming from inside the box. Comparing this to the former number one at Old Trafford is like chalk and cheese, as De Gea faced an average of 3.8 shots on target per match, with only 2.8 being inside the box on average.

David de Gea 2022/23 vs Andre Onana 2023/24 (per 90)

Player

Goals Conceded

Clean sheets

Save Percentage

Pass Accuracy

Shots on Target Faced

David de Gea

1.2

0.5

70.14%

68.33%

3.8

Andre Onana

0.2

66.67%

74.14%

Onana vs De Gea – our verdict

While the stats are very heavily in favour of the former goalkeeper at Man United, who tops 10 out of 16 categories, Onana has only played five league games meaning his form is from a much smaller sample size that is not helped at all by the performances of those in front of him. When the ball is passed back to the former Cameroon international, the team does look a lot more comfortable, and more importantly, he looks far more assured in possession than De Gea ever did. The end of the season will be a fairer time to compare the two properly, but at the moment it is difficult to draw too many conclusions.

Screenshot 2023-09-23 at 15.02.52 (2)

Screenshot 2023-09-23 at 15.03.09 (2)

De Gea was a brilliant shot-stopper in his prime, and that is yet to be seen from Onana, but there is still time for this of course. Time will tell if the new man can live up to expectations and start helping his side out of the hole they currently find themselves in.

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I’m better than DE GEA in one area – ONANA blast FABRIZIO ROMANO during sky sport interview

I’m better than DE GEA in one area – ONANA blast FABRIZIO ROMANO during sky sport interview

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