Man Utd’s Onana transfer alternative conceded 15 and reached Champions League knockouts

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Manchester United crashed out of the Champions League after finishing bottom of the group.

A return to the Champions League was not Manchester United hoped for, with a dismal campaign seeing the team win just one of six matches.

It was a frustrating experience, especially considering the team held leads in four of the games. Holding onto them was another matter entirely.

Goalkeeper Andre Onana was partly culpable for United’s struggles, with individual errors in three matches, while he did save a penalty in another.

Diogo Costa also concedes 15

Manchester United had two goalkeepers in consideration in the summer when a decision was made to move on from David de Gea.

The alternative, per The MEN was to sign Portugal number one Diogo Costa, before Erik ten Hag caught wind of his former Ajax stopper Andre Onana’s availability from Inter.

Onana has had a mixed start at Manchester United, while Costa has stayed put. So how did he get on in the Champions League for Porto this season?

Well, he ended up with exactly the same ‘goals against’ record as Andre Onana, with both goalkeepers conceding 15 goals in the Champions League group stages.

Costa conceded his goals against Barcelona, Royal Antwerp and Shakhtar Donetsk.

Porto lucky, Manchester United not

The difference for Costa and Onana was that while the Manchester United goalkeeper conceded 15 goals and finished bottom of the group, the Porto stopper will be in the knockout rounds.

Porto finished second in their group after winning four matches, finishing level on points with group winners Barcelona.

So they must have scored a lot more goals than Manchester United, right?

Wrong. Porto had exactly the same scoring record as Manchester United, scoring 12 goals and conceding 15.

15 goals was a club record conceded by an English team in the group stages.

Yet Porto will be playing knockout football and Manchester United are out of Europe altogether.

Porto’s goals were scored and conceded more efficiently, gaining 12 points while United earned only four points.

Thierry Henry said he was ‘shocked’ Manchester United scored the same amount of goals as group winners Bayern Munich (12) and went out of the competition. Bayern only conceded six.

In their group, Porto netted the same number of goals as group winners Barcelona (12), and went through. Barcelona conceded 12 themselves.

Manchester United can rightly count themselves unlucky. Discarding the Bayern games, each match against Copenhagen and Galatasaray was chaos, with Erik ten Hag‘s side making critical errors at the wrong times, hampered by injuries and red cards.

Perhaps it would have worked out better if United had signed Diogo Costa. While he also conceded 15, he seems to have fortune on his side.