Ole Gunnar Solskjaer heaped praise David De Gea after his sublime performance against Tottenham Hotspur.
The Manchester United stopper kept the Spurs attack at bay all game to seal a sixth win in a row at the start of Solskjaer’s interim tenure.
After the match, he said the Spaniard is challenging legends Edwin van der Sar and Peter Schmeichel for the title of greatest United goalkeeper.
But how does his Premier League stats stack up against two iconic goalkeepers and does he deserves that acclaim?
Clean sheets
De Gea comes off worst in this stat with both van der Sar and Schmeichel both having better clean sheet ratios.
The Spaniard has kept 97 clean sheets in 259 Premier League appearances.
Van der Sar did not let in a goal in almost half his games with 90 in 186 matches while Schmeichel kept a whopping 112 in his 252 Premier League games (he also played one season in the 91/92 First Division).
Win ratio
The current United No.1 is lagging behind in this category as well as his is the worst with a win ratio of 57.5 per cent.
Schmeichel is in second with a 60.7 win percentage while the clear leader is Van der Sar with a massive 67.7 per cent.
Titles
De Gea was part of the 2012/13 Premier League winning campaign and has also won the FA Cup, League Cup and Europa League in his eight seasons at the club.
Schmeichel and van der Sar have an incredible 16 major trophies between them.
The former won five Premier League titles, three FA Cups, the League Cup and the Champions League while the latter won the Premier League four times, the League Cup and also the Champions League.
De Gea still has some way to go before he can match those honours.
Verdict
The mitigating factor to these statistics are the quality of the players who played around them.
De Gea has remained playing at a world class level while there has been turmoil at the club.
Schmeichel had the formidable Gary Pallister and Steve Bruce to protect him and later Jaap Stam.
Van der Sar had Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic, who were arguably one of the best defensive partnerships of the Premier League era.
The current United stopper has had people like Phil Jones, Chris Smalling and Marcos Rojo.
Arguably this makes his statistics for the Red Devils look all the more impressive.
