Imagine the tabloid headlines if David De Gea had comically let the ball trickle through his grasp into the path of an incoming Southampton striker.

The reaction would certainly not have been as muted as the one which followed that error by Joe Hart.

The Spaniard’s most ardent critics would have been calling for his immediate deportation from Manchester United.

It is true that De Gea has one major weakness. He lacks authority dealing with high balls and crosses into his box. But at 22 he has plenty of time to learn and bulk up. Alex Ferguson is showing patience and perseverance which goes a long way to explain how highly he rates the youngster who he purchased for a shade under €20 million.

Goalkeeping is the most thankless task on a football pitch and for that reason it is important not to jump on the bandwagon when a keeper commits an error whether that relates to Joe Hart, David De Gea or Robert Green.

But the England No 1 has made a few glaring errors this season and not received half the criticism afforded to his Spanish rival.

Costly errors

Prior to the Southampton game, he had been caught out at his near post by his ex-team-mate Adam Johnson in a 1 – 0 defeat to Sunderland while his own manager Roberto Mancini has publically admitted that Hart has made a number of costly errors.

Yet 24 hours after Hart’s fumble against the Saints, ex-Manchester City keeper Joe Corrigan claimed that it was not an error on the England No 1’s part. According to Corrigan, Hart’s “slippery skin” coupled with his rolled up sleeves was to blame. Admittedly that is forensic analysis of the highest order but that would not necessarily hold up in a court of law.

Of course as the old saying goes, form is temporary and class is permanent.  Joe Hart is a fantastic goalkeeper, supremely confident and a commanding presence in his box, while his one man show to keep a rampant Borussia Dortmund at bay earlier this season is enough evidence of his true worth.

But if you crunch the numbers this season, he has been quite poor. His saves-to-shot rate is miles behind De Gea. Hart has saved 64.7 per cent of shots on target compared to De Gea’s hugely impressive 77.3 per cent. In fact only five regular No 1s in the Premier League have an inferior saves-to-shot ratio than England’s undisputed starter.

Jingoism?

And this might come as a shock to some people. But under the rubric of saves-to-shot ratios, David De Gea is actually the best goalkeeper in the Premier League, marginally ahead of Chelsea’s Petr Cech going into this weekend’s matches – a fact which seems to have passed many pundits by. Of course there is more to goalkeeping than simply making saves, but it is still a telling statistic especially when it comes to the diverging treatment meted out to Hart and De Gea.

The same element of jingoism which created the myth of a “golden generation” capable of global glory seems to be at work here, the same premature chest-beating that claims that Southampton’s Luke Shaw is on the verge of becoming a world class left-back after a handful of senior appearances, the same cheerleading that suggested that Andy Carroll was in the same bracket as Didier Drogba before Kenny Dalglish went out of his way to uncover the truth by splashing out £35 million.

But as long as Hart does not commit a major blunder in an England shirt during a World Cup or European Championship like David Seaman (who saw a wonderful legacy forever tainted), he will continue to be shielded to a greater than extent than De Gea in the English media.