Onana nightmare continues as Manchester United man hits new low ‘just hours’ before Salah exposed

Things cannot get much worse for Andre Onana at Manchester United after he ‘dropped another clanger’, while Mo Salah’s successor had no shots or key passes.

I’ve got the key, I’ve got the secret
After becoming the first goalkeeper to ever shout at a team-mate in the summer, Andre Onana continues to make history as the first goalkeeper to ever make a mistake leading to a goal.

The next cycle of the ongoing Manchester United crisis was always going to be an awkward one to navigate with three full days in between their Champions League defeat to Bayern Munich and the Premier League game against Burnley on Saturday evening. But online content always finds a way. Unfortunately.

‘Andre Onana spills it again as Man Utd blunder goalie spotted dropping his car keys hours after Bayern horror show’ is the headline on The Sun website and already ‘Man Utd blunder goalie’ is up there with the very best second mentions.

Proper journalism, this: 386 words almost entirely padded out by Onana’s own quotes after the Bayern match, with four pictures and at least one thesaurus used to find numerous ways of describing a person dropping their keys.

He ‘dropped another clanger’. He was seen ‘spilling his key card’ in ‘his latest fumble’. He is a goalkeeper, you see? These are also goalkeeping terms. Do you get it? Do you get it?

He also had a ‘mishap at the airport’, which for Mediawatch generally includes the soiling of one’s clothes but it’s all relative.

This all, of course, took place ‘just hours’ after his Bayern ‘horror show’. Tick those bingo cards, people.

Tony Little would presumably be very happy indeed with his work but then it isn’t clear whether he actually exists or not. Unlike every other Sun website writer he has no author profile and Mediawatch can find no relevant social media accounts bearing the name. Tony Little doesn’t appear to have ever written anything for anyone – Sun website or otherwise – before getting this huge scoop. So fair play to him.

READ MORE: Man Utd tipped to appoint ‘rising star’ after sacking Ten Hag with ex-Tottenham target identified

Woe is me
Riding off the back of the inimitable Tony Little’s success, the MailOnline grab another piece of the Onana pie for themselves.

They don’t even have any fun with it, though, just repeating a line about the keeper’s ‘handling woes’ in the headline, first paragraph and a picture caption.

The entire article is 229 words. If even their heart isn’t in the churnalism game then really what is the sodding point?

That’s gotta be Kane
After the post-Bayern wave of wilful ignorance about how Manchester United should have signed Harry Kane/wasted a whole summer before realising Daniel Levy wasn’t going to sell to a Premier League club, Mediawatch expected that laborious argument to die down at least until the return match at Old Trafford in December.

Mediawatch is stupid.

‘Having planned to sell Dean Henderson and sign a new back-up keeper for De Gea, United blew a larger chunk of their budget by buying Onana from Inter Milan for £47.2million – a year after he left Ten Hag and Ajax on a free transfer,’ Chris Wheeler writes in the Daily Mail.

It’s the kind of money that could have made the difference between getting Harry Kane rather than Rasmus Hojlund this summer. Both Kane and Hojlund scored for their teams in the Allianz Arena, but there is no doubt who would be the greater asset to United right now.

Leaving aside the whole ‘why didn’t they go for Kane?!’ thing, Manchester United have scored nine goals in six games so far this season (more than Newcastle) and conceded 14 (more than any other Premier League club). Unless the plan was for Kane to relive his Europa League days as an emergency keeper or moonlight as a defensive midfielder then it doesn’t really matter right now who would have been ‘the greater asset’ to them up front.

Okey Doaky
David Maddock was in Austria to indulge in his favourite pastime: drooling over Liverpool and Jurgen Klopp.

‘Perhaps the most impressive aspect as the English club got their Europa League campaign off to a perfect start, was what is still to come from Klopp, with his lineup here hinting at a bright future for the Reds,’ he writes in the Daily Mirror.

On a night which started hesitantly, the players who turned the game were 17-year-old Ben Doak, Havey [sic] Elliott, still only 20, and 18-year-old Stefan Bajcetic, ably assisted by Ryan Gravenberch who is 21.

Well Doak and Bajcetic were taken off at 1-1 and Liverpool took the lead two minutes later so the idea they ‘turned the game’ seems a little strange. As is the claim they ‘had done their job’.

They were absolutely fine. Bajcetic was involved in the incident which led to Luis Diaz winning the equalising penalty but beyond that it was the more established players who changed things.

Doak was apparently ‘the stand-out’ with ‘his pace, penetration and trickery down the right flank illustrating just why some perceive him as a long-term successor to Mo Salah’. Maddock makes a couple of references to how the Scottish winger ‘pinned LASK back’ with his dribbling – and he completed more of those than any other player with three – but that seems like one way of avoiding saying Doak had no shots and no key passes.

This is the ‘long-term successor to Mo Salah’, remember.

That Klopp took the brave decision to use him from the start ahead of Salah – brave because it is well known that the Egyptian superstar HATES being left out, and has missed just one game before in Europe for the club – speaks volumes of the manager’s belief in the little Scottish winger.

It speaks volumes of how Klopp wanted to rotate his entire squad, making 11 changes to his starting line-up. It speaks volumes of how Doak is obviously a part of said squad. It would have been braver – and more foolish – to just keep playing Salah twice a week, no matter how much he HATES being left out.

Salah, by the way, had two shots and scored one in his 17-minute cameo. How ‘long-term’ is this apparent succession plan?

The Liverpool Echo, whose red-tinted glasses usually offer the most positive of all Anfield slants, reckon Doak was given a ‘harsh lesson’ and say of his 6/10 performance: ‘A handful of trademark thrusts into the box first half but crosses didn’t really lead to much.’

Sounds like he ‘turned the game’ alright.

READ MORE: Salah has replaced Kane and made a mockery of ‘the most selfish player’ claims as Liverpool leader

Luis Diaz celebrates after scoring for Liverpool at LASK in the Europa League

Super Nani
‘Fernandes named forgotten Man Utd star in list of eight superstars he idolised’ – Daily Mirror website.

Who on earth is *checks notes* four-time Premier League winner, European champion, former Manchester United Players’ Player of the Year and 112-cap Portugal international *checks notes again* Nani, is it?

Pole dancing
‘Poland’s new national manager Michael Probierz was in the stands, just 24 hours after being appointed to his new role.

‘However, if he was here to check on Matty Cash’s form he was out of luck as the 13-times-capped Polish international started on the bench’ – Graeme Bryce, The Sun.

He might have popped along to watch the five Polish players who play for the Polish team while he was knocking about in Poland, to be fair.

Cash back
‘Man Utd ‘ready to take huge loss on Jadon Sancho’s £72m transfer fee’ as club prepare to sell outcast in January’ – The Sun website.

Fair play to them for accepting they probably won’t get £72m for a player they don’t want and who hasn’t performed consistently well since he joined two years ago.