David James makes more strange comments about De Gea

Earlier this month, David James was guilty of making some very strange comments about David de Gea. He argued that our number one should be dropped in favour of Sergio Romero.

“When he plays, Manchester United do let in quite a few goals,” James said. “Romero starts the season and has three clean sheets, with lots of people questioning why De Gea wasn’t playing. Since he’s come back in they’ve had one clean sheet. I think he makes some wonderful saves, he’s very athletic, but I don’t think he helps Manchester United out as much as Romero can. It’s interesting that he didn’t go to Madrid, Real Madrid weren’t that eager on buying him, because with Navas in goal for them he’s having a stellar season.”

The Argentinian had nothing to do in his first few games and he failed his first real test when United went to Swansea in the league. We lost 2-1 and Romero could have done better for both goals.

James has continued to make bizarre comments about our goalkeeper, today claiming that De Gea wouldn’t be number one if his deal to Real Madrid hadn’t broken down at the last minute.

“You look at Navas at Real Madrid, it’s no wonder De Gea didn’t go there,” said James. “When you think that Navas is such a good goalkeeper that De Gea wasn’t necessarily going to be the number one anyway. I think it was possibly a reason, because Navas is awesome. He has been for a few years now. I enquired a couple of years ago to Arsene Wenger, ‘Why don’t you go for Navas, £8million or £10million buy-out?’ He had Ospina on his card, he went for Ospina, didn’t he? Navas has had an exceptional start to the season in Spain and justified my theory that he is up there, if I say the top three – as a loose number – in the world because he is that good.”

This is a great theory, apart from the fact that Real Madrid agreed to sell Keylor Navas in the deal that would have seen De Gea go in the opposite direction. So if De Gea had left this summer, he would be Real Madrid’s number one and Navas would be United’s. De Gea being behind Navas in pecking order at Real Madrid was an impossibility, but well tried anyway!