Senne Lammens Is Giving Man Utd What They Needed After Andre Onana

Manchester United have switched things up in goal this season and it’s paying off.

Senne Lammens shows great confidence at set pieces. | Zohaib Alam/Manchester United/Getty Images

There is a lot to be said for doing the basics well and Manchester United goalkeeper Senne Lammens is increasingly the embodiment of that in his first season in the Old Trafford pressure cooker.

Lammens walked away from Monday night’s scrappy Premier League win over a physical Everton as Player of the Match and it feels as though the Belgian is a ‘safe pair of hands’ after two rollercoaster seasons of André Onana, who proved capable of both world-class feats and horrible mistakes.

In a first interview with assembled member of the U.K. press, including from BBC Sport, the Daily Mail and Guardian, Lammens explained his “pride” in doing everything well, just “maybe not always the box-office stuff.” That gives him an incredibly strong foundation from which to perform.

Edwin van der Sar summarized it nicely as a guest on Sky Sports Monday Night Football: “[Lammens] makes saves when needed, not looking to make saves when not necessary.”

‘Do your job’ was a favorite motto of Bill Belichick that underpinned his New England Patriots dynasties. Lammens is definitely doing his right now and not overreaching, either.

United’s most successful goalkeepers of the 21st century fit that mould—think Edwin van der Sar or David de Gea. Fabien Barthez was replaced after only three seasons and was more in tune with Onana, with the erratic Frenchman sometimes just too eager to get involved and prone to an error.

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Lammens’s Childhood Idol Has Shaped His Game

Lammens has modeled big parts of his game on Manuel Neuer. | Marvin Ibo Guengoer/GES Sportfoto/Getty Images

“Sometimes at United, I don’t really have a to make a lot of saves. It’s a different kind of goalkeeping, but it's also sometimes the most difficult when there are only one or two saves to be made,” Lammens said, highlighting the importance of concentration when a spectator for long periods.

“All-round and not really having any flaws,” is his philosophy. “You don’t always have the [most] work, but it’s staying focussed and not giving opponent anything—not easy things, at least.”

Manuel Neuer is an all-rounder and that’s why the German, rather than fellow countryman Thibaut Courtois—someone Lammens has naturally been compared with—is a particular inspiration. “I was such a big fan of [Neuer] because he didn’t really have a weak point.

“I spoke a lot about it with Tom Heaton, who’s helping me in my time here as well. He talks about not giving things away and keeping your team in the game. If you want to have a long career, especially in these kind of clubs, they have to count on you and you have to be dependable.”

It’s certainly not intended as a dig at Onana, but those characteristics are what he sometimes lacked.

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Lammens Game for Physical Premier League Challenges

When Ruben Amorim decided not to select Onana in the early weeks of this season, even after the Cameroon international recovered from a preseason injury, he favored Altay Bayındır. But the Turk struggled with the aerial demands of the Premier League, something Lammens thrives on, exactly as seen when Everton routinely loaded his six-yard box at set pieces this week.

“It’s one of my strengths, sometimes I like the challenge as well,” the former Royal Antwerp stopper explained. “Of course it can get too much sometimes, but everyone has to deal with it. As a goalkeeper you have to get used to that and train for it and get better at it.

“I’ve been doing a good job at it so I’ll continue to do that. I think also that’s why Manchester United were interested in me because they knew how it was going to be. To be honest, if it continues like this, just the physicality in general and those corners, I sometimes even like it, I have to say. I enjoy getting out of my comfort zone a little bit and dealing with those situations.”

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