Senne Lammens made a winning start to life as a Manchester United goalkeeper – keeping a clean sheet in their 2-0 win over newly-promoted Sunderland.
Iconic ex-Manchester United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel has aimed a dig at Andre Onana, and Altay Bayindir, as he offered up his verdict on Senne Lammens‘ debut. Following the positive outing, the iconic shot-stopper moved to temper expectations around Lammens after his first start.
The summer signing made his United bow on Saturday afternoon as he kept a clean sheet during the 2-0 win over newly-promoted AFC Sunderland. Ruben Amorim made the bold move to drop Bayindir to his bench and hand the Belgian, Lammens, an opportunity to make his first appearance on the eve of the international break.
His arrival comes during a turgid period for United goalkeepers with both Bayindir and Onana making several high-profile mistakes. Onana completed a temporary move to Trabzonspor of the Turkish Super Lig, allowing the 23-year-old to move up the ranks at Old Trafford and compete with the Turkey goalkeeper for a place in the first-team.
Schmeichel couldn’t help but highlight the previous misdemeanours from shot-stoppers that have come back to haunt United.
And, although the early signs are positive for Lammens, the multiple-time Premier League-winning goalkeeper stressed that he didn’t want to put too much pressure on his shoulders – outlining the real quality will be shown responding to mistakes further down the line.
“You think about the goalkeepers that we’ve had over these last couple of years and how many goals we’ve conceded from errors, nine errors already this season – it’s too much,” he told Monday Night Club.
“I go back to when I played, my instruction was and it was the same with Edwin [van der Sar] and David de Gea, we had to save the team 10 points a season, not give them away and that’s what we’ve got used to in the last couple of years, goalkeepers giving goals away and therefore losing points. First of all, it’s nice to see a clean sheet, then a really good and solid goalkeeping performance.
“It’s what you see, you see this young lad, he didn’t really have much to do for a long, long time, he literally only had the ball at his feet and he did quite well.
“You’d expect that from any young goalkeeper these days – as that’s how they’re brought up – so there was some resemblance to Edwin, a couple of long balls, he had that first save down to his left, which you expect him to save, but once he’s done that, he’s a goalkeeper now, he’s saving balls.
“From that, I think his confidence grew, you could see from the first cross, Matthijs de Ligt’s reaction was fantastic, defenders want that when they’re under the cosh to take some of that pressure off.”
He went on: “It’s not happened at Man Utd for a bit and of course, the defenders were happy about it. It’s far too early to talk about it, how good this guy is, he’s only young, he’s hardly played any competitive football, he’s most certainly not at Man Utd.
“Unfortunately we’ve seen over the years, great players come into Man Utd and the pressure is relentless – then they can’t deal with that. It would be silly for someone like me to put more pressure on him.
“He did well, he’s got an international break now then the next game he’s got to do the same.
“Then we see how he develops, all goalkeepers make mistakes, that’s when we find out how good people are, in how do they react to those mistakes? It was nice, clean and positive, things that we haven’t been used to.”
2025-10-06 19:45:47
