The trick that helps Manchester United's Senne Lammens dominate Royal Rumble corners

Hill Dickinson Stadium, full-time, and the blue shirts finally stop swirling. Everton’s last-ditch siege has ended, and rising through the human scrum is Manchester United goalkeeper Senne Lammens, gloves clenched, eyes still scanning for danger that no longer exists. A 1-0 away win will be logged in the table, but for students of the position the afternoon offered something more valuable: the clearest illustration yet of the Belgian’s method for turning penalty-area chaos into calm.

Everton’s blueprint was obvious once hope of an equaliser began to fade: load the box, crowd the keeper, make every dead ball a Royal Rumble. David Moyes later confessed the plan banked on Lammens “not doing as well as he did.” The numbers tell how badly that wager failed. Ten corners to United’s one, 35 crosses attempted, five completed. Lammens claimed two cleanly and punched four others to safety; six total interventions from inside the six-yard box, joint-highest in the Premier League this season.

The secret is not mere size—though 6ft 4in with a rangy wingspan helps—but a refusal to retreat. Lammens rarely starts on the edge of his six-yard box; instead he tilts forward, weight on the balls of his feet, reading the angles before the ball is even struck. If screens block his lane he simply finds another, sometimes stepping behind the goal-line to create the run-up he needs. “I couldn’t even be inside the goal,” he told Sky Sports. “That’s too much, but it’s difficult for the referees to see.”

That self-solution rather than self-pity defines him. In the 65th minute two Everton blockers attempt to pin him; Lammens bursts through the traffic and meets the cross with a rising right-fist punch that deposits the ball into the Gwladys Street End. Four minutes from time, with four blue shirts jostling, he repeats the feat, knees up, elbows wide, contact at apex, danger extinguished. Each punch achieves height, distance and, crucially, respite.

The approach is contagious. United’s back line, once gripped by aerial anxiety, now defend on the front foot, certain that anything lobbed into the six-yard channel belongs to their goalkeeper. The statistics reflect the transformation: three clean sheets in the last six matches under Michael Carrick, compared with two in the previous 16. After the final whistle Carrick labelled his keeper “exemplary”; Moyes settled for “bloody brilliant.”

Imperfection has not been erased—Lammens was screened on Arsenal’s late equaliser earlier this month—but the response matters more than the mistake. Seconds after that setback he again left his line in stoppage time to punch clear, helping to preserve a 3-2 win. Against Everton the cycle repeated: obstruction met not with retreat but renewed aggression.

Aerial dominance, after all, is less about spectacular saves than about presence, about owning the most anarchic real estate on a football pitch. On Merseyside, amid flying elbows and tangled torsos, Senne Lammens did exactly that, stepping forward again and again until the final whistle brought the only statistic that truly counts: another clean sheet, another away victory, another night when the Royal Rumble finished with the goalkeeper’s hand, or fist, on top.