Manchester United number-one David De Gea has welcomed the recent competition with team-mate Dean Henderson for the right to be the Reds’ regular in-between the sticks after he posted an image of the two captioned ‘Winners’ on his Instagram account.
De Gea, 29, joined United nine years ago from Atletico Madrid in a move which cost the Reds £22.5m as per TransferMarkt and has since gone onto feature in over 400 matches in all competitions for the club, keeping 143 clean sheets along the way.
However, after a string of individual errors and inexcusable inconsistencies the Spanish international has seen his place as United’s number-one come under threat after young keeper Dean Henderson returned from a two-year long loan spell with Sheffield United.
Henderson, 23, rejoined United at the back-end of last season and recently put pen-to-paper and signed a new five-year bumper deal, as per Sky Sports.
The young Englishman’s commitment to United will see him rival De Gea for the right to become the club’s new number-one.
In a recent appearance on Sky Sports former United defender Gary Neville claimed that the two goalkeepers competing against one another may not be a good thing, as quoted by Daily Mail, the pundit said: “The idea that Dean Henderson would come into Manchester United and replace David de Gea as No 1 goalkeeper straight away… it won’t happen, I can guarantee it won’t happen.
“This has got “problem” written all over it. The one area of the pitch where you need consistency and stability is your goalkeeper.
“You need to know who your No 1 is, you cannot be flip-flopping. It just does not work; I’ve never seen it work at any club or at international level.
“Where there is a decision to be made about two goalkeepers you have to pick your No 1, go with him and stick with him, even if there is a mistake.
“Once you take David de Gea out of the team and put Henderson in, you may as well forget about De Gea. That’s coming from my experiences at United.
“The period between Peter Schmeichel and Edwin van der Sar we had Ricardo, Fabien Barthez, Mark Bosnich, Roy Carroll, Tim Howard, Massimo Taibi, many goalkeepers over a five to six-year period and there was inconsistency that certainly didn’t help.”
However, in light of recent concerns suggesting that the pair may not react well to being in direct competition with one another, De Gea has posted a photo of the pair on his social media titled “Winners”.
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