Senne Lammens reveals the advice that has made him the answer to Man United’s goalkeeping woes | OneFootball

A couple of days after what he called “the war in the 16”, the victor reported he came through it unscathed. Senne Lammens had no cuts and bruises. His body was fine, his reputation enhanced.

The Manchester United goalkeeper had been crowded at corners, starting behind his line as Everton’s battery of six-footers sought to dominate and intimidate. As David Moyes ruefully reflected afterwards, they didn’t expect Lammens to cope as well as he did.

It is a statement that is true both for Monday night’s victory at Hill Dickinson Stadium and his debut season in England. A relative unknown was propelled into one of the most pressurised jobs in goalkeeping, after a solitary season as Antwerp’s first choice, before he had made his international debut.

He has looked undaunted whereas a rather more experienced and decorated goalkeeper, Andre Onana, had floundered at Old Trafford. Lammens’ £18.1m fee makes him seem a bargain.

It helps that he has looked suited to the particular challenges the Premier League poses. “It's physicality and a bit of war in the 16,” said Lammens; for those not raised on metric measurements, the 18-yard box is 16 metres.

“It's always been a bit of my strength, always, even in Belgium which is less physical but the principles are all the same. The technique is the same. Now it's a little bit more bodies in front of you, but my teammates help me out as well with blocking the guys away from me. You have to be kind of big and not easy to be pushed around, so I think that's also important.”

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Senne Lammens coped admirably with Everton’s physicality from set-pieces (REUTERS)

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Lammens was named player of the match for his performance (Manchester United via Getty Images)

It helps that Lammens is tall. “Naturally I've always been a little bit bigger, a bit more weight wise,” he said. But he has a presence in another sense. He is a calm figure. As Michael Carrick said on Monday, it is better to have a goalkeeper who takes the chaos away; Onana went unmentioned but sometimes seemed the man who created too much chaos.

Lammens has felt immune to errors. He is heeding the advice of United’s third-choice keeper, and a man 16 years his senior. “Tom Heaton is talking about how goalkeeping sometimes it's not giving games away,” he said. “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.”

Reliability requires concentration. “Sometimes in United, I don't really have to do a lot of saves,” he said. “A different kind of goalkeeping, but it's also sometimes the most difficult.”

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Lammens has settled in well at Old Trafford (AFP via Getty Images)

That is one of the issues joining United poses. Another is that everything is magnified. “You know it's Manchester United, one of the biggest clubs in the world, but also you have to look through that a little bit,” Lammens said. “It's still football, the game isn't that much different.”

But the attention is, especially for someone who made the leap from Antwerp. “They warned me that Manchester United is a different animal, especially social media wise,” he said. “They warned me that it is one of the biggest clubs, if not the biggest club. It is always on social media. It’s all positive now, but I know sometimes it can get negative fast so I don't really want to be looking towards it too much.”

Lammens may not read the comments on his phone, but he turned up to support the Manchester United Foundation’s children’s book appeal, surprising a group of children at Partington Central Academy Primary School.

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Lammens surprised a group of children at Partington Central Academy Primary School (Manchester United)

Some of his own education came from watching a couple of the modern-day goalkeeping greats. “My biggest idol as a goalkeeper was probably [Manuel] Neuer,” he explained. “I take pride in being an all-round goalkeeper and I think that's also why I was such a big fan. I'm also Belgian, so Thibaut Courtois is always a big thing.”

Despite Courtois’ brilliance for Real Madrid, it was unexpected when United looked to Belgium for an answer to a problem position. The goalkeeping scout Tony Coton identified Lammens, just as he had pushed the cause of David de Gea 13 years earlier. A couple of other teams were interested in the 24-year-old but he only really wanted to join one club. He was in no rush to leave.

“I wouldn't mind being longer in Antwerp if that give me a better situation in this in the winter in in next summer,” he added. “But United was always my number one option in my head.”

And some of goalkeeping is in the head, the anticipation and the preparation. “I think also that's why Manchester United also were interested in me because they knew how it was going to be, how the Premier League is,” said Lammens. “Fitness wise is one thing, but also just visualising the things and all those bodies next to you trying to navigate. But to be honest, if it continues like this, the physicality in general and those corners, I sometimes even like it.”