As Anders Lindegaard is fond of telling us, he’s not here to pick his nose. In fact, by his own count, he has already told us this one thousand times. He’s here to be Numero Uno (but he doesn’t want to be Number One – apparently he wants Park’s Number 13 shirt but that’s a different story).
Anders shows off his bogey-free finger.
Now clearly, the coaching staff at Manchester United know far more about their players than I do and certainly Eric Steele has probably forgotten more than I will ever know about goalkeeping but I cannot, for the life of me, see what Anders Lindegaard has done (or not done) to currently be our second-choice goalkeeper.
The main problem he seems to have is that we paid over £18million for David de Gea whilst we paid “only” £3.5million for Anders Lindegaard and you just don’t leave out an £18million player without a very good reason.
Of course, you don’t pay £18million for a goalkeeper without a very good reason and maybe in time we will all see exactly why so much faith was put in David de Gea and his ability to become the best ‘keeper in the world.
For now, though, I do believe that Lindegaard is the best ‘keeper on United’s books. He pulled off a few very good saves against Benfica the other night and whenever called upon during the pre-season tour, he looked equally as impressive.
The only thing I might concede at this moment in time is that De Gea appears to be a better distributor of the ball – he seems to love playing the long ball out and getting an attack underway right from the back whilst Lindegaard seems perhaps less confident in this respect and prefers to play a more “safe” ball out.
One thing I’m pretty sure of is that it is not really too desirable to keep swapping and changing your goalkeeper and the other thing I am pretty certain of is that Lindegaard does not seem to be similar to someone like, say, Tomasz Kuszczak who, after something like thirty years on the bench, has suddenly started to voice his dissatisfaction. Lindegaard really doesn’t strike me as the type to stick around playing second fiddle for too long.
Which presents something of a problem, I think, and, at this stage, I do have to wonder exactly why we didn’t give Lindegaard more of a chance to prove himself before splashing such an enormous amount on De Gea.
Clearly the coaching staff know a million times more about this situation than I do and, of course, I trust their judgement 100% because, as we all know, Manchester United always get it right when it comes to buying players, especially goalkeepers…
If this comes across as some kind of knock against De Gea then I apologise, it isn’t. If De Gea is the man for us and he turns out to be as good or even better than the likes of Peter or Edwin then I’ll be delighted, I am 100% behind De Gea. However, I cannot, at this stage, turn my back on Lindegaard because he’s as much a United player as De Gea and he also deserves our 100% support.
It’s a toughie and no mistake and I just hope that we haven’t spent in excess of £21million buying ourselves one big headache.