Eric Ten Haag will have several tasks to do upon arrival at Manchester United and plans to rebuild with the entire summer. The club is expected to be very active in the transfer market. Players such as Paul Pogba, Nemanja Matic and Jesse Lingard will be leaving after their contracts expire this summer, with midfield seen as the most important task. However, the problems in the backline also need to be solved, and Tenhag needs to make a difficult decision about who he chooses as a goalkeeper, knowingly.
David De Gea has been United's goalkeeper of choice for more than a decade, but at the age of 31 he is no longer the model of a modern goalkeeper. Another option for the club at the moment is Dean Henderson, but he doesn't have many opportunities at the club. The Briton has excelled at Sheffield United on loan and is expected to challenge De Gea when he returns to Old Trafford in 2020. However, Henderson has watched from the bench for most of the past two years, and in this season's Premier League, he has not played a minute. De Gea's form prevented Henderson from playing, with the Spanish goalkeeper's expected number of goals conceded second in the Premier League. But De Gea is expected to save 7.5 more goals than xG, second only to Wolves' Jose Sa in the Premier League.
Despite his excellent performance in terms of saves, De Gea's ability to control the ball remains worrying. Tenhag implemented possession dominance at Ajax, relying on his goalkeeper as a skilled passer while also being able to clear dangers at the back. This is exactly the success Onana has achieved over the years and has played a key role in how Tenhag's team maintains its possession position. After all, both Liverpool and Manchester City have reason to ask their goalkeepers to play an active role in possession and sweeps to cover opponents' pressing.
But De Gea has yet to prove that he can do it. Instead, he is a goalkeeper who tends to stay on his own defensive line rather than direct his own penalty area. This can be seen in the fact that De Gea has only managed to block 3.1% of crosses inside the Manchester United penalty area this season, which is at the bottom of the entire Premier League. He is also the third-to-last goalkeeper to perform defensive moves outside the penalty area, averaging just 0.24 per game. These two figures suggest that De Gea is not a suitable person for Tenhag. In addition, De Gea averaged the fewest passes per game among England's top-flight goalkeepers, at 20.6. So while De Gea is a good goalkeeper, he lacks several key areas where a modern goalkeeper needs to excel. Henderson may not be the answer, but it's clear that De Gea needs to make improvements in some areas to please Tenhag or he could be sold as United look to the future.