Senne Lammens travelled to Royal Antwerp’s Bosuil Stadium on Monday morning, gathered a few belongings and dashed to Antwerp International airport without saying goodbye to his teammates. He landed in Manchester at midday and was whisked to United’s Carrington training complex to complete his £18m transfer.
Lammens had been pinging radars at Old Trafford and across Europe for months after breaking xG models in an extraordinary first season for Antwerp in the Belgian Pro League. He was stood down from club duties over the past two weeks as the deal progressed. Yet the 23-year-old goalkeeper was left waiting until the final hours of the window while United considered Aston Villa’s Emiliano Martinez, and it turned into another frantic deadline day deal.
Martinez was the safe pick wanted by Ruben Amorim, an established Premier League keeper and World Cup winner with the kind of nasty streak United have been missing. In the end, his wages and Villa’s asking price proved prohibitive, requiring Andre Onana to be offloaded. United tried to shoo Onana to Turkey over the weekend, but a move never materialised.
Yet Lammens represents the kind of transfer that, if he lives up to his potential, could reap far greater rewards than the 32-year-old Martinez. The image that comes to mind is a young David de Gea, who joined United as a callow 20-year-old and developed into perhaps the best shot-stopper in the world. And while the comparison is lofty, there is something of De Gea in Lammens, a tall figure who often uses his feet to make miraculous saves.
An afternoon watching clips of Lammens so you don’t have to (“THIS is why Manchester United bought Senne Lammens!”, “Senne Lammens ultimate save compilation!”, “Every Senne Lammens goal-kick in 2024/25!”) was equal parts mesmerising and compelling, and revealed an athletic keeper who seems to cover every corner of his goal simultaneously. Some of his low saves were particularly eye-catching, quickly shifting his weight before shooting out a glove to stop the ball dead like a gecko’s tongue.
Thibaut Courtois is another obvious comparison, and Lammens may eventually succeed the 33-year-old as Belgium’s No 1, although he has competition for that mantle. He did not make the latest national squad as transfer noise swirled, with Belgium head coach Rudi Garcia opting to call up Strasbourg’s 20-year-old keeper Mike Penders instead.
However, the statistics suggest Lammens is already a special talent who had analysts checking that their models were working properly. Lammens faced shots worth a total of 45 expected goals in the league last season and conceded only 32, preventing 13 more than he really should have. Put another way, he kept out 0.5 more goals per game than the average goalkeeper – no keeper in Europe’s top five leagues matched that phenomenal level of added value.
It was not only his shot-stopping which stood out. De Gea’s problem on his arrival in 2011 was the Premier League’s physicality, and he struggled with crosses and set pieces. Lammens is more robust and should not have the same issue, claiming more crosses than any keeper in the Belgian league last season. When opponents take the aerial route, Lammens shuts the airspace.
He is neat and tidy with the ball at his feet, calm enough to pick out a pass with a striker rushing towards him. And perhaps most remarkable of all is Lammens’s penalty record: he faced six penalties in the league last season and saved four of them. How many goalkeepers have a positive penalty record? These were not gimmes but full-stretch leaps either side, and as if to prove the point, he faced one this term and saved that too.
There is clearly a dollop of risk here. Lammens has only played one full season of professional football, he has no international experience and virtually no game time in European club competitions. United are signing numbers on a graph and saves on YouTube, not medals and trophies, and there is no guarantee he will be an upgrade on the error-prone duo Onana and Altay Bayindir. This is the transfer game now, so intensely, unhealthily competitive that a right-back playing a few good games in the Swedish Allsvenskan could set off alarms in recruitment departments all over Europe.
United’s transfer committee, headed by Jason Wilcox, clearly have faith. Onana may well replace Bayindir in goal after the international break, having recovered from a hamstring injury, but Lammens will soon get his chance to compete for a starting place, certainly when Onana departs for the Africa Cup of Nations in December and perhaps sooner.
On the same deadline day when United sold Antony and Rasmus Hojlund for huge losses, Lammens’s arrival represented a more prudent approach to the market. Amorim needs immediate results, not long-term investment. But this is a transfer with vast upside if it comes off.
