When Ruben Amorim arrived at Manchester United in November, a new goalkeeper wasn’t exactly at the top of the to-do list. The club was still trying to remember what competent football looked like, and there were far bigger fires to put out. But over time, Amorim seems to have reached the inevitable conclusion: if United wants to rebuild, they’ll need to start from behind. Literally.
The official word, ahead of the trip to Newcastle, was that Onana was given a chance to ‘rest and disconnect,’ which is a polite way of saying he was dropped. This resulted from two costly mistakes against Lyon in the Europa League – a competition that was supposed to be a minor distraction, not another arena for disaster. The reality is more complex to spin: Onana has become a liability, and Amorim knows it.
Since joining United, Onana has made more errors that directly led to goals than any other Premier League goalkeeper. Even in the one area where he was supposed to excel—distribution—he’s often been erratic, misjudging passes, misplacing kicks, and generally radiating a sense of unease that seems to infect everyone around him.
Altay Bayindir, the backup, was handed a start at St James’ Park and promptly shipped four goals. It’s unfair to judge him on one outing, but United never expected him to be a long-term solution. So the search begins again—this time not for a ‘modern goalkeeper’ or an ‘elite distributor,’ but someone who can do the job.
While Amorim has suggested that the emergence of young centre-back Ayden Heaven may lessen the need to shop for a new defender this summer, there’s no such internal solution in goal. Onana’s inconsistency has made that painfully clear. There is, now, a recognition within the club that if they are serious about returning to the top, they cannot afford to persist with a goalkeeper who invites calamity every other week.
Names like Lille’s Lucas Chevalier have been floated—hardly a marquee signing, but maybe that’s the point. Perhaps United don’t need glamour at this position. They need dependability, competence, and a goalkeeper who doesn’t make you hold your breath every time the ball is played back to him.
Onana was supposed to be a cornerstone of the rebuild. Instead, he’s become a case study in how far the club’s recruitment has drifted from reality. He cost £47 million – an absurd outlay for a player Inter Milan had picked up for free the previous year. But then, this is Manchester United: where timing is off, strategy is thin, and the price tag rarely matches the product.
Now, Amorim is tasked with the unenviable job of reassembling this fractured team, and he will have to do so with a goalkeeper who can command his box, not just play cute passes across it. Because whatever the vision for United’s future may be, it surely doesn’t include watching another season of André Onana, arms raised in bewildered apology, wondering how it all went wrong.
