Jesse Lingard scored the opening goal in Manchester United’s 3-0 win over Stoke, on the back of an impressive performance in the FA Cup against Derby days before.

Lingard, who has had to wait until he’s 22 to break in to the first team, after joining the club when he was just seven, and has admitted he’s living the dream.

Obviously, it was my main aim when I was young, so to now be playing week in, week out in the Premier League for Manchester United is a dream come true. I’m living the dream but I know I’ve got to keep working hard because others are fighting for my place too, so I have to keep scoring goals and creating chances.

We’ve got freedom and a lot of energy in the team. We want to entertain the crowd and this win is a weight off our shoulders, we can just play football now. We know that as long as we’ve got the fans behind us we’ll come through. It [recent criticism] has been hard, but we have to concentrate on the games. We have to play the match as we see it at the time, we showed great character to bounce back against Derby and Stoke. We can now concentrate on trying to get another three points [against Chelsea this weekend].