'Erratic' Onana 'worse than U18 keeper' as €50m flop faces Man Utd drop
Tom Weber
- 1 Dec 2023 09:32 CST
- 3 min read
Jamie Carragher did not hold back when assessing Andre Onana's disappointing performance against Galatasaray.
The €50 million summer signing committed two massive howlers that ultimately led to Manchester United being unable to muster more than a 3-3 draw with the Turkish giants. What made the errors so galling wasn't merely the schoolboy nature of Onana's misjudgements, it was the fact that the Red Devils had splashed the cash on him precisely to stop being undone by silly mistakes.
David de Gea was error-prone last season, particularly when he had the ball at his feet, but at least the Spaniard was still a solid shot-stopper. Onana, on the other hand, gives Man Utd something different in the build-up, but his actual ability to prevent goals has been nonexistent in the Champions League.
"It is not sustainable for Manchester United to have a goalkeeper consistently making so many routine errors," wrote Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher in his column for The Telegraph. "The longer this continues, the more vulnerable he will become."
Unacceptable performance
"The performance for a Manchester United goalkeeper in Turkey was unacceptable," Carragher continued. "You would not expect an Under 18 keeper to make the basic handling error for Galatasaray’s second goal. If a youth keeper was promoted and played like Onana on Wednesday evening, he would probably never feature for the first team again."
"Onana has cost United too many cheap goals. The hope that the worst was behind him after a poor start to his Old Trafford career has been blown out of the water and Wednesday was a huge step backwards. Onana has already developed a reputation for being a liability. That will take a long time to overcome and reverse."
"You cannot play for Manchester United and avoid this level of scrutiny, especially when the stakes are as high as they were in Istanbul. Huge fixtures are settled by small margins."
The Liverpool legend concludes: "Onana must massively improve in the coming weeks and months, otherwise the derision will shift from an erratic keeper to the manager who keeps picking him."
