When Tottenham Hotspur visit Manchester United, two goalkeepers with reputations for inconsistency — one reputation recently earned, the other of a more long-standing vintage — are due to face each other.
David De Gea’s beginning at Old Trafford has not exactly been the ticker-taped coronation imagined after slow-witted performances against Manchester City in the Community Shield and West Bromwich Albion last weekend.
On the Spurs side, Heurelho Gomes is also a No 1 with previous, and none more so than at Old Trafford. In this fixture last season, it was his comic misunderstanding of the free-kick laws that allowed Nani to dispossess him unchallenged, score and win United the fixture.
But when it comes to goalkeeping errors at the moment, it is United who are occupying the glass house into which stones are being thrown, yet manager Sir Alex Ferguson remains undaunted about De Gea’s start and believes he will prosper under the Old Trafford lights, claiming that he was hindered by West Brom’s physical style of play as opposed to any personal faults. “He coped with the crosses into the box with no problem; he just didn’t get any protection,” Ferguson said. “You saw the challenges — an elbow in the face, a boy went under him and he didn’t get the free kick.
‘‘It’s disappointing when you don’t get the protection but he’s at home against Spurs and it won’t be a problem. It’s just away from home where he might get subjected to that. I have no problems with him.”
And when it comes to toughening De Gea up, Ferguson insists no special treatment is required.
“He’ll go through the same programme of core work as the rest of the players do when they come here,” he said
“Van der Sar was still a tall skinny kid when he won the European Cup in 1995. He was the same — David’s only 20.”Ferguson’s rigorous defence of his new goalkeeper must surely be tempered by his concern that Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic, his principal central defenders, may be ruled out for as long as six weeks and five weeks with respective hamstring and calf complaints.
However, the United manager believes he has the strength in depth via Phil Jones and Chris Smalling, to provide the necessary cover for De Gea and he was particularly open in his praise for Jones. The former Blackburn defender was brought to Old Trafford earlier this summer for around £17 million in a move that widely seen as a purchase made 12 months earlier than Ferguson wanted to in order to keep him out of the clutches of the likes of Arsenal and Liverpool. Yet Ferguson denied that and argued that Jones’s acquisition was a proactive move rather than a reactive gesture.
“He was just one that we couldn’t miss,” Ferguson said. “He’s definitely got all the parts, there is no doubt about that. He has got the desire to play and he’s a good trainer and great determination about him.
"When he was playing against us in the 7-1 [defeat Blackburn suffered at Old Trafford last season], after the fifth goal he was running out and giving everyone stick and he was only 18 then. I was very impressed.
