David De Gea and the status quo bias
Originally published on May 17, 2022
There is always a fight about something in the Manchester United fan base. The discourse around whether David De Gea should still be the starting goalkeeper at the club is just one of the many endless arguments we constantly have. But I decided to make it the first piece in my cognitive biases in football series because it’s a fascinating topic with many interesting viewpoints that warrants some discussion.
In 1988, two American economists carried out an experiment that demonstrated the nature of the status quo bias. They asked participants a series of questions where they had to act as decision-makers in several laid-out scenarios. The results were fascinating, as the research revealed that when faced with critical decisions, people are far more likely to choose options that keep things as they are, most likely discarding alternatives in the process. The experiment went on to show that the more participants were given alternatives to choose from, the more the bias became relatively stronger.
If you haven’t already guessed, the status quo bias is basically when people prefer things to remain the same. It’s primarily a topic of interest in economics but has also been applied to sociology and politics. It’s an intriguing cognitive bias that almost all of us are susceptible to due to its propensity for influencing our decision-making at almost astronomical levels. But the basis for not wanting things to change is rooted in the belief that nothing good will probably come from any change; things are alright the way they are.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The last few months have highlighted how much people still believe in De Gea. I’m not sure why, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s because he was one of the best goalkeepers in the world just over six years ago, and most of the admiration he still gets stems from that period. He was truly amazing to watch, especially considering the rest of the team was mostly just very poor.
When Jose Mourinho said that finishing second with Manchester United was his greatest achievement, he owed it to De Gea, having, in my opinion, the best individual season by a goalkeeper in Premier League history. But times have changed since then, and so has the game we love. It has become clear, at least to me, that the Spanish international falls short of many of the key traits that a modern goalkeeper should possess.
In 2020, Mark Critchley of the Independent revealed something about De Gea that only a few of his fans already knew: the 31-year-old was never really comfortable behind a high line, even though there had been some suggestions in the past that he was a sweeper. Sometime after the 2018 World Cup, fans began to put greater emphasis on the aspect of modern goalkeeping that requires them to come off their lines, claim crosses, and just simply be good with the ball so the team can play out from the back more conveniently. Goalkeepers are now expected to do more than just stop shots, just as fullbacks are expected to be more helpful in the final third, center-backs to be more productive and adventurous with the ball, and wingers as well as midfielders to get in on the goals almost as much as strikers do.
“In my teams, the goalie is the first attacker, and the striker is the first defender.” Johan Cruyff.
It has taken some time, but people are starting to catch up with the idea. But the phenomenon springs up when some of us still succumb to the status quo bias and fail to recognise De Gea’s limitations in critical situations. There was a reason why Jurgen Klopp signed Alisson Becker from AS Roma in 2018 and broke the world record fee paid for a goalkeeper. The Liverpool manager simply realised that If you want your team to concede fewer goals and be dominant in possession, you need a proactive goalkeeper.
Because their goalkeepers act like outfield players in the first phase of play, Liverpool and Manchester City can effectively beat the press with relative ease when they build out from the back. Both goalkeepers do a lot of defensive work outside of the box, which is one of the reasons why they keep more clean sheets. The emphasis is more on shot prevention than shot-stopping. However, it is also entirely possible that the teams simply have a better defensive structure than Manchester United’s; their players work harder off the ball, defend and attack as a unit, and win individual duels. But De Gea’s overall output as a goalkeeper is simply too poor at the moment for him not to be regarded as a net negative in this current Manchester United side.
Most people, including myself, fall prey to the status quo bias due to nostalgia and a desire for things to stay the same because they are afraid that other alternatives will make things worse. For example, an incumbent candidate is more likely to win an election than a contender because people have already built up a certainty around the incumbent. A voter would know about the strengths and weaknesses of the incumbent, and to some extent, the incumbent becomes predictable. On the other hand, the contender is a complete stranger, and strangers are notoriously unpredictable. Most voters would need a genuinely awful incumbent to be able to overcome their status quo bias and vote for the contender. Still, the more candidates in the race, the more likely the incumbent will win because, all things being equal, people tend to fall back to what they already know.
There’s a great deal of uncertainty around who should replace De Gea, which is why I think most people are still adamant that he stays on as the club’s number one. Others truly believe he has been one of the club’s best players this season and has formed their opinions around how he has been able to fulfil their personal expectations of what a good goalkeeper should realistically be able to do. For them, shot-stopping is enough. But it’s almost absolutely certain that a lot of the things that other keepers in top teams do are things De Gea simply isn’t capable of, and it’s still very unclear if he would be able to do them in the future.
I also think that people continue to defend De Gea because they believe they’ve identified more pressing issues than the goalkeeper and have simply concluded that the Spanish international will improve when better defenders surround him or when the defensive structure around him improves. While it’s a valid point, it doesn’t change the fact that some fans continue to overlook his individual ability on the pitch when it comes to more objective metrics for measuring how the modern-day goalkeeper should play, which has almost nothing to do with the defensive structure, and this is how we allow the status quo bias to influence our opinions, by wanting things to stay the same because you can’t solve a problem if you don’t believe there is one.
