When the average corner in this season’s Premier League resembles the midway point of a Royal Rumble match — a comparison that Kobbie Mainoo could not help but draw on Instagram last night — how exactly are you supposed to defend them?
You could get smart. Start leaving more players further up the pitch, for example, thereby forcing your opponents to either keep more of their own men back too or risk being caught on the counter-attack.
You could get even. Sharpen your elbows, tread on a few toes and indulge in the dark arts yourself in response.
You could get serious and lobby the game’s law-makers, the International Football Association Board, to legislate against the blocking, crowding and grappling that has defined much of this season’s top-flight fare. Except, you’re probably doing exactly the same at the other end of the pitch on your own corners.
Or, you could just get a goalkeeper who comes through the mass of bodies in front of him to claim almost every ball and punch all the others clear.
In a hard-fought, hard-earned victory away at Everton, Manchester United had that goalkeeper, and with perhaps the finest example yet of his characteristically cool, calm and collected brand of goalkeeping, Senne Lammens neutralised the chaos of the modern-day Premier League penalty area.
Lammens made saves worth 0.86 xG against Everton (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)
The 23-year-old had already impressed as the closing stages of Monday night’s 1-0 victory approached, having dealt with everything that David Moyes’ side had thrown his way up to that point. But once Everton’s search for an equaliser got desperate, Lammens elevated a good performance to a great, game-winning one.
Whether from a set piece or in open play, Everton began floating ball after ball on top of Lammens but underneath his crossbar. Each time, he was equal to it, either claiming the ball with both hands or batting it away to safety.
This was always done despite a stramash of team-mates and opponents surrounding him, jostling for position, sometimes pushing him back into his own net.
“It was a bit over the top for me, personally,” he told Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football at full time. “I couldn’t even be inside the goal; I had to be behind the line to come out. That’s too much, but it’s difficult for the referees to see it.”
All in all, Everton had 10 corners to United’s one. They played 35 crosses compared to United’s six, but completed just five. Lammens claimed two of them, punching away another four. This was all in service to another clean sheet, his third in six games under Michael Carrick, compared to just two in the previous 16.
Both sets of managers struggled to find the right superlatives for Lammens’ performance post-match. Carrick said he was “exemplary”. Moyes went for “bloody brilliant”. What was the thinking behind Everton’s corner routines? “That the goalie wouldn’t do as well as he did,” he said.
If that was the plan, Everton needed a better one. Lammens’ authority when coming to claim crosses has always been one of his standout attributes. It was that ability which marked him out to coaches who worked with the young Lammens within Club Brugge’s youth setup.
He has rounded out other elements of his game in the years since, and Monday night was a reminder that he is also quite good at that most fundamental of goalkeeping tasks: keeping the ball out of the net.
Lammens is top for expected goals prevented (xGP) per 90 minutes among Premier League goalkeepers this season, saving his team-mates from conceding around 0.2 goals on average.
Against Everton, that figure stood at 0.86, his most impressive stop denying Michael Keane’s attempt from range in the 83rd minute. It was a camera-friendly save — instinctive and acrobatic — but what is impressive about Lammens’ shot-stopping is that so many of his others are not.
There was, for example, nothing especially spectacular about the way he held James Garner’s free kick towards the end of the first half, or in the way he smothered Tyrique George’s late opportunity, but the fact he caught both attempts rather than parrying them away for a corner or a follow-up effort on goal is more important than adding another clip to the highlights reel.
Speaking post-match, Carrick could not help but agree with one reporter that there are similarities between Lammens’ temperament and that of his former team-mate Edwin van der Sar, who was also full of praise for the Belgian while appearing as a pundit on Sky Sports.
Carrick went on to hail how his goalkeeper had adapted to one of the most highly pressurised positions in the sport, joining United after only one full season of senior football in the Belgian top-flight. He was right to, but United themselves also deserve credit for taking a chance on a young goalkeeper with a modest track record — not least goalkeeping scout Tony Coton, who championed his signing internally.
Lammens with his team-mates after a win that takes his side to within three points of third (Paul Ellis / AFP via Getty Images)
It is even more encouraging that Lammens was not the only summer recruit to make an impact on United’s first trip to the Hill Dickinson Stadium.
The other three combined for the decisive goal, which owed much to Matheus Cunha’s exceptional defence-splitting pass to Bryan Mbeumo, but also Benjamin Sesko’s lung-busting run from the edge of United’s box to the edge of Everton’s, where he finished superbly for his sixth goal in seven games.
United are now in a rare position where, as the business end of the campaign approaches, all of their summer arrivals can be said to be enjoying solid debut campaigns. All of them are making a difference.
But is any single member of that £194million ($261.5m) attacking triumvirate making as big a difference, week in and week out, as Lammens is at the other end of the pitch? Probably not, because the contrast between the Belgian’s calm, level-headed assuredness with some of his more unpredictable predecessors is night and day, and seen in almost every game.
A team with a more erratic goalkeeper drops two points on a night like this, but Lammens was not dropping anything, no matter what chaos was happening around him.