When in talks about a new contract, there are things to do and things not to: stumbling over the ball in a Europa League quarter-final and giving the opposition striker an open goal from 35 yards probably belongs in the latter category. There were about 40,000 raucous delighted Spaniards in the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan Stadium, but David de Gea wasn’t one of them.
Youssef En-Nesyri’s second goal, and Sevilla’s third, was not his only mistake as Manchester United beat a sorry retreat from Europe, but it was the most glaring. His current £375,000-a-week salary worked out at £125,000 for each goal where he should have done better. Staying at Old Trafford will already involve a sizeable pay cut but De Gea may wish negotiations had been concluded before his harrowing night in Seville.
For Erik ten Hag, who can be both pragmatic and ruthless, who wants a goalkeeper who can pass out from the back but has De Gea, whose limitations on the ball helped cause En-Nesyri’s opener, the Spaniard is a case where he has to compromise. United’s budget will have to be diverted to other departments and it is no secret a striker and a midfielder are priorities. De Gea is likely to stay.
“He’s the one with the most clean sheets in the Premier League; that shows he’s a very capable goalkeeper,” said Ten Hag; it fell short of the praise when Ole Gunnar Solskjaer used to deem him the world’s best goalkeeper. Now De Gea has had a fine, if flawed, season. Yet at 32, he is unlikely to become United’s 11th outfielder. Ten Hag had described him as a “multi-functional” goalkeeper the previous day. Rather, he will always remain a monofunctional one: a very good shot-stopper at his best, albeit one who is prone to mistakes.
As Ten Hag can testify, the problems in managing United include the issues he inherited. They could be called the Solskjaer legacy although the Norwegian can at least argue he reached a Europa League final, rather than overseeing an exit as wretched as United’s capitulation against Sevilla. One problem resolved itself, albeit explosively, when Cristiano Ronaldo engineered his own exit.
Others remain. Ten Hag demoted Harry Maguire from the team in August but injuries to Lisandro Martinez and Raphael Varane restored him to it. On the day the Pope received a Martinez shirt, it became ever more apparent he is unlikely to ask for one of Maguire’s. It was the Englishman who, calamitously, was the immediate cause of En-Nesyri’s opener, giving the ball away in a tight situation where Varane or Martinez may have been able to pick a pass. Cue the all-too-familiar hangdog expression from Maguire, confidence shot, somehow so often the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Why always him?
It is easy to say he should be a candidate for a clearout, harder to find a destination for an £80m signing on large wages who, at 30, would have diminishing resale value to any buyer. It was an indictment of Maguire that, with the captain back in the team, United lacked leadership. That didn’t just reflect on the centre-back but his oddly good run – United had won the last 11 matches he started – ended in an intimidating environment, against fired-up opponents and, in En-Nesyri, the kind of purposeful, muscular centre-forward United could do with.
United had a soft underbelly, a weakness. “It is about character, so be composed, [show] desire and passion,” said Ten Hag. “They had more willingness to win, it can’t be. I think it’s unacceptable. We did not match the standards you can expect from a Manchester United team.”
And yet if he will have to work with some of the culprits, if some seem repeat offenders, there is also the wider context: of a season of some progress, with lengthy unbeaten runs. United are a strangely schizophrenic side: they lose few games but can be hideous in defeats. The 3-2 at Arsenal stands out because it was a close game where United did much right: in most of the others, they were diabolical. It is a moot point where Sevilla ranks in a list that includes Brighton, Brentford, Manchester City, Aston Villa, Liverpool and Newcastle. They were all terrible. “Now it is too often we have really poor performances and it can’t be,” said Ten Hag. All bar Brighton of the worst days were on the road. Since the Dutchman’s first two games, they have always followed a loss with a win. “Every time we bounce back,” added the manager. “This team has character and mental skills but sometimes we are not there.”
If it felt like a contradiction, perhaps it was. In Seville, United began without half his first-choice team, in Varane, Martinez, the suspended Bruno Fernandes and the half-time substitutes Marcus Rashford and Luke Shaw. Yet they have played on other harrowing occasions. Yet the team sent out still cost north of £450m. De Gea and Maguire, the two senior figures in it, should have been cornerstones. Instead, they proved liabilities against Sevilla and remain quandaries, trapping United in a troubled past Ten Hag has tried to escape.
