Rene Meulensteen ‘cannot imagine’ Man Utd didn’t sign £40m star this summer | Football

Former Manchester United coach Rene Meulensteen says the club missed a trick not signing ‘strong character’ Emiliano Martinez from Aston Villa in the summertime.

Locking down a top quality alternative for Andre Onana had been identified as one in all United’s key priorities on the back of one other error-strewn season for the Cameroon international last term.

Concrete discussions took place between United and Villa regarding a proposed deal for Martinez and the World Cup-winning Argentine was said to be desperate to push through a move to Old Trafford.

However the Red Devils as a substitute focussed their attentions on Senne Lammens because the transfer window drew to an in depth and the Belgian accomplished a deadline-day switch from Royal Antwerp, for a fee believed to be within the region of £18million.

Lammens went on to impress on debut in United’s 2-0 victory over Sunderland before the international break, coming away from the match with the side’s first clean sheet of the Premier League campaign.

Nevertheless, Meulensteen, one in all Sir Alex Ferguson’s closest aides during his time at United, ‘can’t imagine’ the club selected to pursue Lammens over a more established option like Martinez – who was reportedly available for £40m.

‘The query is, why did they not bring Emi Martinez in now?’ he told BetVictor.

‘Because whenever you usher in a serial winner, take a look at Gianluigi Donnarumma, you usher in a player who knows what it’s wish to win titles, to win Champions Leagues.

‘Martinez has won the World Cup. He knows what the Premier League is about. He’s an enormous, charismatic fella, a robust character.

‘I can’t imagine why they haven’t done it now. And I can’t see Aston Villa wanting to let him go unless they’ve got someone within the ranks that they imagine can step in immediately, they usually get a number of money for him.’

Ruben Amorim threw Lammens in on the deep end for the primary time by against Sunderland, with the side desperately in search of a positive performance after an immensely disappointing begin to the brand new season.

Replacing Altay Bayindir between the sticks, Lammens greater than stood as much as the challenge and his assured showing even had United supporters singing, ‘Are you [Peter] Schmeichel in disguise?’, on the Theatre of Dreams.

Schmeichel himself was mightily impressed by what he saw from Lammens, applauding the 23-year-old on what he described as a ‘really good and solid goalkeeping performance’.

But the good Dane called on United’s fanbase to be patient and realistic with their expectations for Lammens while he adjusts to life in a brand new league and environment.

‘You concentrate on the goalkeepers that we’ve had over these last couple of years and what number of goals we’ve conceded from errors… nine errors already this season? That’s lots. It’s an excessive amount of,’ Schmeichel told BBC Radio 5 Live.

‘I’m going back to once I played, my instruction was and it was the identical with Edwin [van der Sar] and David de Gea, we had to avoid wasting the team ten points a season, not give them away and that’s what we’ve got used to within the last couple of years, goalkeepers giving goals away and subsequently losing points.

‘To begin with, it’s nice to see a clean sheet, then a extremely good and solid goalkeeping performance.

‘It’s what you see, you see this young lad, he didn’t really have much to do for an extended, very long time, he literally only had the ball at his feet and he did quite well.

‘You’d expect that from any young goalkeeper nowadays – as that’s how they’re brought up – so there was some resemblance to Edwin, a few long balls, he had that first save all the way down to his left, which you expect him to avoid wasting, but once he’s done that, he’s a goalkeeper now, he’s saving balls.

‘From that, I feel his confidence grew, you could possibly see from the primary cross, Matthijs de Ligt’s response was incredible, defenders want that once they’re under the cosh to take a few of that pressure off.

‘It’s not happened at Manchester United for a bit and naturally, the defenders were completely happy about it. It’s far too early to speak about it, how good this guy is, he’s only young, he’s hardly played any competitive football, he’s most actually not at Manchester United.’

Schmeichel, a five-time Premier League winner with United, added: ‘Unfortunately we’ve seen through the years, great players come into the club and the pressure is relentless – then they’ll’t take care of that. It might be silly for somebody like me to place more pressure on him.

‘He did well, he’s got a world break now then the subsequent game he’s got to do the identical.

‘Then we see how he develops, all goalkeepers make mistakes, that’s after we learn the way good individuals are, in how do they react to those mistakes? It was nice, clean and positive, things that we haven’t been used to.’

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