Senne Lammens arrived at Old Trafford with the Premier League Transfer of the Season already in his cabinet, yet four games into the new campaign it is Paul Scholes, not a run of errors, doing the questioning. The United great has used his platform to ask the sport’s oldest question of a new goalkeeper: can he win you the title?
Paul Scholes Casts Doubt Over Senne Lammens Role
Speaking on The Good, The Bad and The Football podcast, Scholes made clear he is not yet convinced by Senne Lammens, framing his concern around the wider demands of the goalkeeping position at a club with United’s ambitions.
“What team have you seen win the Premier League without a top-class goalkeeper? Lammens might be that, I don’t know, I think the jury’s probably still out on that,” Scholes said, according to Paul Scholes on The Good, The Bad and The Football podcast.
It is a familiar refrain from Scholes when it comes to United’s last line of defence. Two years earlier, on the Stick to Football podcast, he voiced almost identical unease about André Onana before a ball had been kicked in anger that season, saying: “I’ve heard a lot of United fans say how excited they are for the new season… I’m struggling with that. I still think there are areas of the pitch which are a problem for United. The goalkeeper is a big concern for me. Even in pre-season, with some of the goals he conceded. I worry to death about him.”
Scholes has not accused Lammens of failing, nor has he called for him to be dropped. His comments are presented as opinion rather than verdict, but they land at a moment when every United department is under scrutiny. For a fuller picture of how the pundit views the squad more broadly, Paul Scholes’ verdict on Manchester United is worth revisiting.
The Defensively Unchanged Backline Behind Lammens
Whatever judgement is eventually passed on Lammens, it will be shaped heavily by the four bodies stationed in front of him. Against Ipswich Town and Everton this season, Michael Carrick fielded a back line of Diogo Dalot, Harry Maguire, Lisandro Martinez and Luke Shaw. That quartet is identical to the one Erik ten Hag selected for his very first game in charge back in August 2022.
Three managerial reigns and countless recruitment cycles later, United’s supposed evolution has not extended to the back four shielding whichever goalkeeper wears the gloves. That continuity cuts both ways. It offers Lammens a settled, experienced unit rather than a defence still learning its shape, but it also means any structural issues that dogged United under Ten Hag remain live variables rather than problems already solved.
Onana, for his part, is no longer part of that conversation at all. He is currently on his second successive year-long loan at Trabzonspor, having failed to force his way back into first-team plans since departing on loan last summer. His continued absence underlines just how central Lammens now is to United’s plans, whatever reservations Scholes has expressed.
Senne Lammens’ Debut Season Stats vs Current Form
The case for patience with Lammens rests on a body of work built before he ever kicked a ball in England. United paid Royal Antwerp £18.1 million for him in September 2025, a fee that reflected a debut senior campaign in which he kept nine clean sheets in 32 matches and was subsequently voted Premier League Transfer of the Season.
Set against that pedigree, United’s start to the current campaign reads as a mixed bag rather than a goalkeeping crisis. Carrick’s side have taken four points from their opening four Premier League fixtures, a return built around a 5-2 win over Ipswich Town and undermined by a 1-0 derby defeat to Manchester City. Neither result points squarely at Lammens as the root cause; a five-goal home win is not the profile of a shaky goalkeeper, and a single-goal loss to City says as much about United’s attack and midfield control as it does about the man between the posts.
That nuance is precisely why Scholes chose his words carefully, describing the jury as “still out” rather than delivering a firmer conclusion. Four matches, however scrutinised, remain a small sample against a season-long body of evidence still being written at Old Trafford.
Michael Carrick’s Goalkeeping Dilemma at Old Trafford
For Carrick, the challenge is less about Lammens individually and more about stabilising a team still finding its identity. A goalkeeper signed for £18.1 million on the back of an outstanding debut campaign was brought in to be a long-term solution, not a short-term fix to be second-guessed after four league games.
Public scepticism from a figure as respected as Scholes nonetheless adds pressure to an already delicate early-season picture, one in which pundits across the board are weighing up whether Carrick’s United can genuinely compete at the top end of the table. Paul Merson’s prediction for Manchester United offers another external read on where this squad currently sits in the pecking order.
There is no suggestion, from Scholes or elsewhere, that Carrick is considering a change in goal, nor any indication of transfer activity to address the position. The dilemma facing the manager is more fundamental: whether to let Lammens settle into a defence built on Ten Hag-era foundations, or whether the goalkeeper becomes an easy scapegoat for broader structural questions that predate his arrival entirely. Full detail on Scholes’ comments can be found in the Manchester Evening News report on Paul Scholes’ comments.
For now, the numbers say Lammens arrived as one of the best young goalkeepers outside the Premier League’s established elite. The next few months will determine whether Scholes’ doubts prove prophetic or premature.
