In Andre Onana, Manchester United are signing much more than just a ball-playing goalkeeper

Even if you have only engaged with Manchester United in the most tangential of fashions over recent years, you will doubtless be aware that the player who stood between their goalposts for most of that time was not very good at passing a football. David de Gea was, at the peak of his powers, one of the Premier League's outstanding shot stoppers. But the modern goalkeeping position needs more than a player who simply keeps the ball out of the net. Erik ten Hag and every other coach of an elite level club want a No.1 who sets their team on a path to the opposition penalty area.

Enter Andre Onana. Manchester United are set to sign the Inter goalkeeper for a price that is expected to top out at over €50 million. The Red Devils had long had him as a leading target in their desire to strengthen between the posts this summer, CBS Sports' revelation that Saudi Arabia's Al Nassr had made a lucrative offer to the Cameroonian prompted United to accelerate their pursuit and Onana is expected to be unveiled as Ten Hag's new No.1 in the coming days.

United are certainly getting a man in a rich vein of form. In last season's Champions League, Onana prevented 7.6 goals based on Opta's post-shot expected goals model. Since the data collection firm had begun tracking that particular statistic in 2017 no one had ever hit a higher watermark than the 5.1 goals prevented by... Onana, playing for Ajax in the 2018-19 season. There is a reminder that, for all the understandable exhilaration in United circles about their new goalkeeper's qualities with his feet, he is pretty handy with his hands as well.

Those on ball qualities, though, were what caught the eye of Pep Guardiola when he was preparing his Manchester City side to face Inter in last month's Champions League final. "It's difficult, when you have that keeper [playing against you], to high press properly," Guardiola told CBS Sports. "For the way they play, Onana is an exceptional goalkeeper to take the position to build-up."

The statistics will tell you that Onana has misplaced just one short pass in his last four seasons of league play, that he ranks in the top seven goalkeepers across Europe's top five leagues last season for success rate of passes into the final third and that he created three chances from open play in the 2022-23 Serie A, unsurprisingly not a mark that was bettered by anyone else in England, Germany, Spain or France. What they cannot reflect is the ease he radiates with the ball at his feet, the composure he has under pressure and the vision he has to pick a variety of passes.

It may not be quite so easy for Onana with the ball at his feet next season. As Guardiola noted, an Inter goalkeeper could launch the ball into the final third and be reasonably confident that Edin Dzeko, Lautaro Martinez or Romelu Lukaku could win their one-on-one battles with their opponent. That will not be so easy when he is aiming at Marcus Rashford. However, as the pass map below indicates, Onana did have a fine trade last season in clipped balls out to the flank. In Ten Hag's side he might find Luke Shaw and Diogo Dalot, both of whom won significantly more aerial duels than they lost last season, to be willing recipients. One thing is for certain, if there is a pass on, United's new number one will probably play it.

Onana's bravado might come with its downsides; take the memorable double error against Benfica in 2018 when he drew a press from Jonas, knocked the ball away from a throw in before the forward could poke it into a net, came flying out for the resulting delivery into the box only to get nowhere near it and gift the opposition with a goal. Then again, those mistakes were no less prevalent when De Gea attempted to play out from his defense, as Brentford can attest. The key difference is that when things went wrong for United's former No.1, who left on a free transfer when his contract expired at the end of last month, his immediate response was to mitigate all risk. After De Gea had made his hospital pass to Christian Eriksen in last year's 4-0 loss to Brentford, seven of his next eight passes were hoofs upfield. 

It should of course be noted that United have tried and failed to move to a more modern goalkeeper before. Victor Valdes, one of the progenitors of the goalkeeping position as build-up contributor, was brought in in January 2015 but never got particularly close to usurping De Gea. Argentine Sergio Romero was perhaps better in possession too, but a string of managers concluded that they were not willing to gamble on potentially inferior shot stoppers. For all that picking a pass is an invaluable quality in a goalkeeper, it still matters most of all that they don't let the opposition kick the ball into the net.

At the peak of his powers De Gea offset his possession limitations by being one of the best in the world at actually keeping the ball out of the net. In 2016-17 he prevented a remarkable 12.5 goals in the Premier League season, since then there has been a pronounced drop off. He still has games where it feels like it will take a minor miracle to score against him, but he has developed issues saving down low to both sides while his Golden Glove win in 2022-23 was as much a function of the performances of those ahead of him as it was his own shot-stopping qualities. Thirty-two might seem an early age for a goalkeeper to be entering his post prime period but it is plausible that De Gea is never going to get back to the player he was.

Onana, meanwhile, looks like he is entering his regal period. Having missed nine months due to a drug ban -- he said he had inadvertently taken his wife's diuretic pill when he was looking for paracetamol to quell a headache, an argument accepted by UEFA -- he roared back into form, seemingly intent on establishing himself as one of the outstanding goalkeepers in the world. In shot stopping terms he might well be proving himself to be exactly that at the highest level. 

Goalkeeping stats such as goals prevented can be a little noisy, particularly when the sample size is as small as a Champions League campaign. But over four seasons of elite level continental football the data set gets a little bit bigger whilst still saying the same thing. Onana is an outstanding shot stopper. According to Opta metrics, the 27 year old has faced efforts on his goal worth a combined post-shot expected goal value of 58.2. He has conceded 39. Were it not for his heroics, most notably in the victory over Porto, Inter would not have made the Champions League final. Those games were a showcase for Onana's shot-stopping qualities, his springy dives down low towards the far corners, getting a glove on shots that should have nestled in the back of his net.

The eye test of seasoned veterans backs up what the numbers are saying too. "What I really like about Onana is his movements in the goal, they're really small," CBS Sports analyst and former England No.1 Rob Green said before the Champions League final. "He's always ready to make a save. That lends itself to how [Inter played in the Champions League], the ball will get shifted along, or in and around the penalty area, and he'll always be set, ready to make saves."

A top tier shot stopper and a quality ball player in goal: over recent years an argument could be made that United had neither in goal. Now they have both. The impact that will have on Ten Hag's squad next season could be profound.