Senne Lammens will have gone home on Sunday night, picked up his journal and tried to make sense of where it all went horribly wrong.

Journaling is what keeps Lammens’ mind at ease and what allows him to move on from moments of disappointment, of which Sunday afternoon against Aston Villa will have ranked high on his list.

Lammens may have lamented his decision to use his knees, rather than his hands, in attempting to deal with Alysson’s strike in the first minute. And that he parried a shot straight to Nicolas Jackson to make it 2-0 three minutes later. Lammens is big on accountability. Nobody will have needed to tell him that he could have done much better.

The responsibility for Villa goals three and four, however, lands squarely at the feet of his team-mates, a familiar pattern across the season so far.

Still, this was Lammens' worst performance in a Manchester United shirt, and the player himself is unlikely to have come to a different conclusion. But he has not become a bad goalkeeper overnight. Far from it.

While there was plenty of attention on his two costly mistakes against Villa, many have seemingly forgotten about a crucial one-on-one save Lammens made to deny Julio Enciso in the opening home match against Ipswich Town. It was 0-0 then and United would go on to win 5-2.

They have forgotten two brilliant saves he made at Fulham to deny Sander Berge, and then Josh King. The second, with his right foot, was sublime and kept a listing United in the game at 0-0.

Even in United's season opener, the 24-year-old did tremendously well to push Oli McBurnie’s goalbound effort onto the post, only for three of his back four to switch off, allowing Hull City to score en route to a 2-0 win.

Overlooked are the failed defensive assignments of Bryan Mbeumo (against Ipswich Town), or Carlos Baleba (against Leeds United), or the costly mistakes of Lisandro Martinez, Diogo Dalot and Leny Yoro.

Lammens’ own form has regressed, there’s no doubt about that, but no goalkeeper in the Premier League is being sold short by those in front of him more than the United No 1 right now.

Across 10 Premier League matches, no goalkeeper has faced more shots on his goal than Lammens (52), tied in first place with Newcastle United’s Lukas Hornicek.

It’s also worth noting that no goalkeeper has made more saves in a single Premier League match this season than Lammens’ eight at Chelsea. United went on to lose 2-0 that day.

Lammens has made the fourth-most saves this season and yet has conceded a league-high 19 goals (Crystal Palace's 24 have been let in by both Walter Benitez and Dean Henderson).

Last season, across 32 games, Lammens faced 118 shots, averaging 3.69 per game. Fast forward to this campaign and it’s 52 shots in 10 games, up to 5.2 per game, a stark increase in workload.

Only twice last season did Lammens face six or more shots in a Premier League game. This season it has happened four times already.

Mistakes, such as those at Everton, Fulham and at home to Villa, are costly. His distribution, too, has become a sore spot with Lammens ranking 15th of 16 ever-present goalkeepers for completed long passes (37 of 115 attempted).

But Lammens performed well in the last international break for Belgium behind competent defenders. He doesn’t have that luxury at United right now.

‘Sometimes in the end it comes down to maybe here and there, maybe a mistake from someone, but it doesn’t really start with that,’ Lammens said of United's defensive issues earlier this season.

‘I think it’s a team thing. The manager has been hammering a lot about defending as a team, being able to put pressure on the opposition team, especially on crosses.’

A key selling point for Lammens last season was the composure he brought and the calmness he exuded. He was everything to United that Andre Onana wasn’t. That’s been chipped away this season.

A nervousness has crept in. The misplaced pass against Tottenham Hotspur to Kobbie Mainoo that was never on, which saw him redeem himself with a strong save from Dominic Solanke. The rush of blood to come out – and miss out – as Evanilson knocked the ball past him to score Bournemouth’s third at Old Trafford. The judgment call to use his legs as the ball ricocheted off Martinez and into his own net at Fulham.

All of which has led to a pundit and social media pile-on of a goalkeeper that, in the eyes of some, is now out of his depth.

Which is where the journaling comes in. It helps Lammens' belief that things will turn for the better, and the composure of a man who didn’t get too high when he was anointed the Signing of the Season for 2025-26 across the entire Premier League, and who isn’t getting too low about the most scrutinised run of his career.

‘Especially at big clubs, you don't want a keeper who performs well one match and poorly the next,’ Lammens said back in September.

‘You want someone who is a rock behind the defence. Someone the team can rely on. That's definitely a major goal for me. It's something to embody as a goalkeeper.

‘You can compare it a bit to Edwin van der Sar. He's someone I admire greatly. What I want to take from his game is that calmness.’

Lammens is known to pass up days off to put in extra work, and sources say he is first in in the morning and last to head home at the end of training. There are even figures at United who believe parts of his game have improved on last season.

His confidence was rocked in the summer when his spill to Mikel Merino sent Belgium home from the World Cup and he has had little chance to build back that confidence given the storm back in Manchester.

Basketball legend Kobe Bryant is Lammens' idol. He sports the late LA Lakers star's numbers on his gloves and swears by his 'Mamba Mentality'. And if that mentality tells us anything, it’s that resilience and fearlessness win out.

Lammens is struggling but he’s still the same goalkeeper that was being lauded last season. He just needs a helping hand from those in front of him or this defence will be stuck in a never-ending cycle of misery.