Farewell, Onana – the face of Old Trafford's worst era

The goalkeeper signed two years ago for an eye-catching £47m may have played his last game for Manchester United following a dramatic fall from grace

- Richard Jolly

Andre Onana's last game for Internazionale was a Champions League final. What may forever prove his last match for Manchester United was a Carabao Cup defeat to Grimsby, where he was horribly to blame for one goal, scored a penalty and saved another but, with strangely weak wrists, contrived to get his hands to several others without keeping them out.

By themselves, those two appearances can indicate an ignominious fall from grace. The intervening two years were pockmarked by pratfalls. Onana joined United as the third most expensive goalkeeper ever. He will leave on loan for the remainder of the season, with three years remaining on his contract at Old Trafford but with the suspicion that, like Antony or Jadon Sancho, it is in effect an end, a question merely of how many times he is exiled temporarily before United can offload him permanently.

His replacement thus far this season has been his error-prone understudy, Altay Bayindir. His successor seems to be the new signing Senne Lammens. The rookie is Belgium’s fifth-choice goalkeeper. Onana is joining the team that finished seventh in Turkey last season, Trabzonspor. The Turkish club will pay all of the Cameroonian goalkeeper’s wages but they have no option or obligation to buy him. His salary there will be tax-free, so, for him, some good will come of it. In every other respect, however, his time at Old Trafford has been a hubristic failure.