Man Utd and Man City are signing goalkeepers ill-suited to who and where they are
All things being equal, Manchester United and Manchester City will both confirm the deadline-day signing of a new goalkeeper, but we wonder whether they should make minor deal sheet alterations to bring about a late swap.
Senne Lammens will compete with Andre Onana and Altay Bayindir to be No.1 under Ruben Amorim, while James Trafford will currently be cursing his luck having started the first three games for City this season as Gianluigi Donnarumma arrives from Paris Saint-Germain. Neither makes a great deal of sense.
In a summer in which logic doesn’t appear to have played too great a part in a significant number of transfers – particularly in a striker market in which demand has driven the price of those supplied up to a level in which William Osula costs £30m – it appears as though City have signed a goalkeeper incompatible with who they are, while United’s doesn’t fit with where they are.
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Donnarumma is arguably the best ‘proper goalkeeper’ in the world. PSG would not have won the Champions League without him and at just 26 years old, £30m is a snip, if indeed you want a goalkeeper of his type.
There are few better shot-stoppers in world football. His size, reactions, speed and positioning means if you want a goalkeeper to stop the ball going in your net or one to dominate the penalty area, Donnarumma is your man.
PSG boss Luis Enrique hailed him as “one of the very best goalkeepers out there and an even better man” in an attempt to sweeten the bitter pill of Lucas Chevalier being signed from Lille for £35m to replace him as the Ligue 1 giants’ No.1. Enrique wanted a ‘different profile’ of goalkeeper in Chevalier – who’s very good with his feet – in a move which feels very like what Pep Guardiola did eight years ago when he brought Ederson in to replace Joe Hart.
Ederson – who’s now joining Fenerbahce to make room for Donnarumma – has spent the last eight years being the first line of City’s attack, and with Trafford presumably re-signed with a view to continuing with that ball-playing out-from-the-back style, a move for a goalkeeper snubbed by a manager with very similar values to Guardiola feels like a very odd move.
There’s surely no world in which Donnarumma joins City and watches Trafford from the bench, and while Guardiola’s genius has been in adapting his style throughout his managerial career, we can’t see a move towards speculative goalkeeper punts forming a part of his latest revision, harsh on Donnarumma’s passing ability though that suggestion is.
His flaws make him far better suited to Manchester United, not because Ruben Amorim doesn’t also value the ball-playing ability of his goalkeepers, but because of an Old Trafford tenure pockmarked by goalkeeping errors, specifically shots which should have been saved and crosses which should have been dealt with, along with a crying need for the Red Devils to go back to basics in all areas.
What Amorim is getting in Lammens is further questions over his No.1. Donnarumma or even Emiliano Martinez would have stopped all of that. But now he has three goalkeepers – four if we include Tom Heaton – vying for a spot in the first XI which is about as up for grabs as it’s possible to be as things stand.
The £18m signing is tipped to replace Thibaut Courtois for Belgium when the time comes, but reports claiming he moved to Royal Antwerp because his path to the Club Brugge first team was blocked by Simon Mignolet doesn’t sound hugely encouraging, and we don’t envy any goalkeeper defending the United goal behind that ragtag bunch of defenders, let alone someone with one season of senior football in the Jupiler Pro League.
If anything, Lammens – who is supposedly proficient with both feet when building up from the back – makes more sense as a City addition as backup for Trafford, ready to step in for the academy graduate if needs must, rather than immediately taking his place and leading him to regret a move to Newcastle which might have been, as is likely to be the case as Donnarumma arrives at the Etihad.
‘United’ for ‘City’ on the deal sheet? They probably won’t notice.
