De Gea ends penalty hoodoo by saving from Noble in Man Utd's win over West Ham

David de Gea finally put his penalty-saving curse behind him after stopping Mark Noble's effort in Manchester United's 2-1 win over West Ham on Sunday.

De Gea, known for being a fantastic shot-stopper when at his best, has been dogged by his penalty failures for several years.

But with United's win on the line after Luke Shaw handled in the area in second-half stoppage time, de Gea guessed the correct way and dived low to his left to keep Noble's effort out and secure three points for the Red Devils.

The question marks around de Gea's penalty-saving ability were well founded: until Noble, the Spaniard had not saved a penalty outside a shoot-out since April 2016. That was in the FA Cup semi-final against then-Everton striker Romelu Lukaku.

De Gea has to go back even further to October 2014, a whopping seven years ago, to find his last Premier League penalty save in open play from Leighton Baines, also of Everton.

Such was the concern over the 30-year-old's penalty problem that several observers called for his United rival, Dean Henderson, to take over the No 1 jersey,

Since the 2016 save, de Gea had missed 22 penalties from open play, whereas Henderson had saved eight.

The numbers made even more troubling reading when including penalty shoot-outs. Until saving Noble's penalty, de Gea had failed to save 41 penalties in total - 33 for United and eight for Spain.

Those include all 11 in the Europa League final against Villarreal in May, which United lost on penalties. A staggering shoot-out saw all 21 penalties scored until de Gea had to take one against his opposite number.

His tame effort was saved and Villarreal were champions. Fans and others were adamant that had Henderson started, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's men would have lifted the trophy that night.

Solskjaer, however, continues to have faith in de Gea, and having now put that litany of bad penalty numbers to bed, perhaps the Spaniard's next 40 penalty efforts will make for better reading.