Massimo "Oh Dear" Taibi in Familiar Pose

For eight long and hugely successful years between 1991 and 1999, Peter Schmeichel stood between the opposition and a goal. The fact that, to this day, he still holds the record for the greatest Premier League clean-sheets to games played ratio (42%) of any keeper gives some idea of just how good this guy was.

When he announced that he was leaving Manchester United following our incredible Treble Winning 1998/99 season, it came as a bit of a blow.

The search was on to find a new goalkeeper who could fill some of the biggest boots in the history of football.

Over the next few years, we went through our fair share of them but, for one reason or another, none were quite up to the job.

Mark Bosnich, Massimo Taibi, Fabien Barthez, Roy Carroll and Tim Howard were the most notable (I include Taibi in the list because he was notable for costing £4.5 Million and was launched after just four games, one of which was a 5-0 defeat by Chelsea and one of which saw a Matt Le Tissier daisy-cutter somehow squirm underneath him! He was gone after just four games, never to be seen again.)

Then, we bought Edwin van der Sar.

Having played in the great Ajax team of the 90s, he left there to play for Juventus and then moved to Fulham in 2001 where he spent four years before joining us in 2005. I must admit, I thought at the time that he signed for Fulham that we should have gone in for him and couldn’t understand why he spent four years with Fulham before we finally signed him, but there you go.

Anyway, I don’t think there can be any doubt that Edwin has been our best keeper since Schmeichel’s departure and we are now entering what is almost certainly going to be his last season.

So, are we going to see another string of failures before we finally hit on the keeper to fill the boots or will we get it right first time this time?

Ben Foster has just signed a four year contract with United and Sir Alex had this to say, “He is seen as one of the best young goalkeepers in England and we genuinely see him as a successor to Edwin.”

The use of the word “genuinely” in there has me wondering, it seems a little superfluous to me and the tiny little word “a” is odd. Not “The Successor” but “a successor”. Someone who might play in goals for us at some stage in the future when Edwin leaves but not necessarily as first-choice perhaps? Perhaps there someone else Fergie has in mind between Edwin and Ben?

Time will tell but I hope we don’t have to endure another goal-keeping merry-go-round and with the money currently at our disposal, maybe the time should be now to bring in Edwin’s true replacement – at least if he turns out to be another Taibi, we still have the real deal at the club and ready to go.