Senne Lammens played a starring role in Manchester United’s 1-0 win at Everton, putting his debut season under the spotlight.
Manchester United’s 1-0 win at Everton on Monday was a hard watch for everyone concerned.
It wasn’t thrill-a-minute stuff. Both teams struggled to break down the opposition’s defence, it was scrappy and very physical, with Kobbie Mainoo comparing it on his Instagram story to the WWE Royal Rumble.
Mainoo’s post specifically highlighted the confrontations between the two sets of players every time Everton had a corner in the second half, as the Toffees set about making life as difficult as possible for the United defence and goalkeeper, Senne Lammens.
The referee’s leniency in these moments was curious, to say the least, and yet Everton couldn’t take advantage of the chaos that ensued inside the United six-yard box. The hosts had nine corners in the second half, a figure only three teams have bettered in a single half this term in the Premier League.
Of their 10 corners in the whole match, Everton only recorded one shot with the first contact on a delivery. Otherwise, United stood up to the bombardment well, and supporters will have come away from the game in disbelief at that very fact.
Leny Yoro and Harry Maguire deserve praise for how they handled matters, but most notable was Lammens’ effectiveness in the face of extreme pressure.
Everton manager David Moyes seemingly doubted his ability to cope so well, given he said in his post-match press conference that their expectation was “the goalie wouldn’t do as well as he did.”
Unfortunately for him, Lammens was “bloody brilliant”, lauding him as “the best player tonight.”
United fans will have understandably felt incredibly uneasy watching Everton lump corner after corner into the goalmouth, however, having become accustomed to seeing their goalkeepers wilt under such pressure. Neither André Onana nor Altay Bayindir dealt well with comparable situations over the previous couple of years; even David de Gea had his shaky moments at corners. But Lammens looked in control pretty much throughout on Monday.
That in itself was some feat given Lammens’ appraisal was that Everton’s tactics were “a bit over the top”.
The Belgian had been enjoying a very solid debut season even before the win at Hill Dickinson Stadium, but his performance on Merseyside felt like the best example yet of the reliability he’s offering compared to his predecessor, Onana, and understudy, Bayindir.
Lammens got first contact on five of Everton’s corners on the night; that’s the joint most of any goalkeeper in a single Premier League game this season.
But what makes this especially intriguing is that Lammens’ dealing with corners hasn’t been a particular feature of United’s games this term. Before Monday, his 0.55 corner first contacts per 90 minutes would’ve seen him rank 18th out of the 29 goalkeepers to have played in the Premier League in 2025-26.
That doesn’t mean he’s been poor in that respect, though. In fact, there’s an argument his general assuredness, cool demeanour and competence have contributed to teams targeting him less at corners than, say, Onana. If you don’t think the opposition’s goalkeeper is a weak link, you’re probably less likely to aim corner deliveries under his crossbar.
Similarly, Lammens’ fairly low number of first contacts from corners (11) before Monday could also be reflective of efficient decision making. Just because a goalkeeper touches the ball at a corner before anyone else doesn’t mean it’s the correct decision – the five he made at Everton were all sound, however.
Moyes’ post-match comments suggested Everton felt Lammens could be troubled, but whether that was actually the case or simply a smokescreen for the Toffees’ lack of open-play creativity is at least debatable.
Everton weren’t great as an attacking threat in open play, and so it’s perfectly reasonable to think their likeliest route to goal was via set-pieces – there’s also nothing wrong with that.
But Lammens remained calm amid the grappling and wrestling, rendering Everton’s efforts pointless.
Who knows, maybe on another day Everton would’ve benefited from a slice of luck at one of those corners. However, putting data aside for a moment and focusing on the eye test, corners and crosses haven’t looked an obvious area of concern for Lammens at all this season, otherwise he’d have been specifically targeted more often.
When it comes to open-play crosses, he’s successfully claimed 5.7% of the 244 played by opposition when he’s been in net; only seven goalkeepers have a better record than that, and Lammens has faced more than all but one of those seven.
This was clearly a strength of his last season at Antwerp, as we highlighted in September, and the step up from Onana appears considerable.
Since the start of last season, Onana – currently on loan at Trabzonspor – has claimed 4.4% of crosses (including corners) faced in all competitions, compared to Lammens’ 7.6% over the same period. The Cameroonian had claimed just 3.5% across his two seasons in the Premier League.
There are few more commanding – reassuring, even – actions in football than a goalkeeper competently dealing with high deliveries into the box, and even if Lammens’ numbers don’t necessarily say he does this with the regularity of the Premier League’s other leading keepers, there’s been few reasons to be concerned about him. The Everton game rammed that home.
This brings us back to competence.
Lammens isn’t flashy. He’s not an entertainer like Fabien Barthez was, and it’s also fair to suggest Onana is better with the ball at his feet. But Lammens’ steadiness, consistency and simplicity breed confidence, and this is helped by an authoritativeness that comes across both on the pitch and in the few interviews he’s conducted since joining United.
The competency we’ve referenced isn’t just that which he exudes when facing crosses, but he’s also shown himself to be a perfectly good shot stopper.
According to Opta’s expected goals on target (xGOT) conceded model, Lammens’ saves have prevented 5.5 more goals than the average goalkeeper based on the quality of accurate shots he’s kept out – no Premier League keeper can match that record since the Belgian’s United debut on 4 October.
It’s worth saying that goalkeepers who face more shots can ‘prevent’ more goals, but we can standardise the number of attempts each keeper faced by looking at ‘goals-prevented rate’. This is the number of goals a keeper was expected to concede as a proportion of goals they actually conceded.
Lammens’ goals-prevented rate of 1.23 means he was expected to concede 1.23 goals for each one he actually let in – only Emiliano Martínez (1.27) and Bart Verbruggen (1.25) have done better this season.
What’s helped Lammens in this respect is that he’s been a steady and dependable figure between the posts. He hasn’t made any errors leading to goals in the Premier League, so his goals-prevented output isn’t being hurt by silly mistakes.
This was another area in which Onana underwhelmed. Not only did he make errors with his passing, but some of his most costly mistakes involved failing to keep out shots you’d ordinarily expect an elite-level goalkeeper to save.
On average, he committed an error that yielded a goal every 1,033 minutes in all competitions; Lammens has played 1,980 mins without committing one such error. Bayindir was even less dependable, averaging an error leading to a goal every 520 minutes.
It goes deeper than the errors themselves, though.
Sure, many of those mistakes were damaging and cost points, but they also contributed to a more general nervousness and unease, which isn’t conducive to being a solid defensive unit.
Lammens isn’t the perfect goalkeeper, but he is proving himself to be reliable. Onana was unreliable in many ways and so inspired no confidence in supporters, which almost certainly rubbed off on the players.
Until 4 October last year, practically every Manchester United match since the start of the 2023-24 season felt like it could be thrown away by whoever was in their goal. If Monday told us anything, it’s that they appear to be in very steady hands with Lammens.
Subscribe to our football newsletter to receive exclusive weekly content. You should also follow our social accounts over on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
Steady, Reliable, Authoritative: Senne Lammens Is Proving Himself to Be Everything André Onana Wasn’t Opta Analyst.
Hence then, the article about steady reliable authoritative senne lammens is proving himself to be everything andre onana wasn t was published today ( ) and is available on The Analyst ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Steady, Reliable, Authoritative: Senne Lammens Is Proving Himself to Be Everything André Onana Wasn’t )
Also on site :
- Russia exposed plot to blow up Black Sea gas pipelines – Putin
- Police: Two killed in shooting at West San Jose shopping center
- OpenAI COO says ‘we have not yet really seen AI penetrate enterprise business processes’