Paul Scholes Questions Mile Svilar Lammens' Goalkeeping Status at Manchester United
Paul Scholes has never been shy about saying what he thinks. This time, his glare has fallen squarely on Manchester United’s new number one.
Mile Svilar Lammens, the 24-year-old Belgian signed from Royal Antwerp for £21.7 million last summer, has forced his way past Altay Bayindir and nailed down the starting spot at Old Trafford. He has the shirt. What Scholes is questioning is whether he has the stature.
On The Good, The Bad and The Football podcast, the former United midfielder cut straight to the heart of it.
"What team have you seen win the Premier League without a top class goalkeeper?" he asked. "Lammens might be that, I don't know, I think the jury's probably still out on that and then you build from the back four."
That line – “the jury’s still out” – hangs heavy. Not least because of the timing.
United are trying to piece themselves back together under Michael Carrick, who is attempting to restore structure, authority and some sense of identity to a club that has lurched from one short-term fix to another. Scholes sees the same blueprint that powered their rivals’ resurgence: start at the back, get the defence right, find a goalkeeper you can trust with your season.
He pointed to Arsenal as the model of that approach, a club that quietly hardened their foundations before pushing for the title.
"It's the way Arsenal started three or four years ago, defensively they have been absolutely brilliant. You need a top class goalkeeper," Scholes said. "You think of Liverpool's team with Alisson, Raya at Arsenal, Man United with Peter Schmeichel and Edwin van der Sar. They've all got brilliant, brilliant goalkeepers. You start from the back, of course you do. Whether Michael's just got to be patient and wait for that, I don't know."
There was no attempt to disguise the implication: if Lammens cannot grow into that level, Carrick may have to find someone who can.
The comments land in the aftermath of a bruising Manchester derby, where Lammens picked the ball out of his net after Erling Haaland once again decided the contest. The defeat was not on the Belgian alone – United were outplayed in too many areas – but Scholes’ decision to zoom in on the goalkeeper tells its own story. In games of that magnitude, in his mind, a truly elite keeper changes the script.
Lammens knows exactly what he has walked into. He arrived at a club where the goalposts are guarded not just by the current number one, but by the ghosts of Schmeichel and Van der Sar, by a fanbase that has grown up on last-ditch saves and title-winning reliability.
He has never hidden from that. Speaking last year about the intensity of English football culture, he summed it up bluntly.
"That's England for you. If things go badly, they can bury you deep, but if things go well, they praise you to the skies," he said. "I take that with a grain of salt, because to be mentioned in the same sentence as Schmeichel, I'm going to have to prove myself many more times. But I did find it a very nice compliment. I hope to play here for 10 years and be important, so that, like Schmeichel and Van der Sar, I can leave a legacy."
That is the scale of his ambition: a decade at Old Trafford, his name woven into the same conversations as the greats. Scholes, though, has drawn a hard line on what it takes to earn that status – and on what United must demand if they are serious about returning to the top of the Premier League.
From here, every Lammens performance becomes part of a bigger argument. Every sharp save will be held up as proof that he can grow into the role; every mistake will be replayed as evidence that Scholes was right to question him. There is no hiding place for a young goalkeeper learning on the job in what many still call the toughest league in the world.
United’s past was built on giants between the posts. The question now is brutally simple: can Lammens join that lineage, or will he become the first position Carrick feels he has to upgrade to turn this rebuild into a title challenge?
