Manchester United: Luke Shaw’s hunger to improve paying off for United and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer

The will to make the most of his talents this year has been evident to everyone who knows Shaw, and it is something that Lukaku spoke about when he was endorsing Shaw as player of the season

Not all of the beneficiaries of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s takeover of Manchester United are attacking players. Take a look at Luke Shaw, the left back who had lost his way under Jose Mourinho and is now one of United’s most consistent performers again, playing his best football in years.

Paul Pogba, Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial are the players whose improvements have been the most spectacular under Solskjaer, Pogba changing almost overnight from an unhappy misfit to a bargain at £89m. But Shaw’s development has been steadier. He was already starting to find his way again under Mourinho, which is why he signed a new long-term contract last October, itself a sign of his progress.

But it has only been now under Solskjaer that he has truly voice again. Romelu Lukaku has started to speak of Shaw as United’s player of the season and based on his last few performances it is easy to see why. Last Sunday against Liverpool he handled Mohamed Salah as well as any full-back has done all season, shutting down the little Egyptian as United held on to a crucial clean sheet.

Shaw did not get to do too much attacking on Sunday in a tight, constrained game. But at Selhurst Park he was back to his old adventurous self, storming up and down the left flank. He should have had an early assist for Lukaku, who volleyed wide from his corner, but soon after he set up Lukaku for the opener. Running down the left, moving inside, Shaw faced little opposition and skipped past Joel Ward and Jeffrey Schlupp as he made his way towards the box, an agile, jinking run, not exactly what his detractors would have expected from him. From there he rolled the ball to Lukaku who did the rest.

Solskjaer was delighted afterwards with the attacking threat that Shaw now gives his team, the perfect counterpart to all the pace in behind they currently have. “Luke is in a good vein of form at the moment,” he said. “He is hard to stop and it was a great drive for the first goal.”

After Shaw has worked so much to tighten up his defending, this was exactly what Solskjaer wanted to see, the next step in his evolution. “We want him to go forward,” his manager explained in his post-match press conference. “That is the next step for him as well to do. To trust himself more often going forward.”

Injuries forced United into playing a narrow 4-3-3, which Alexis Sanchez tucked into that inside left role, which allowed Shaw to dominate the whole of the left flank, as Solskjaer explained afterwards. “It was down to the shape we played with today, because Antony [Martial] obviously isn’t fit, and we played Alexis [Sanchez] more inside with Rom[elu Lukaku], and I thought it worked well, with Diogo [Dalot] as a wide right on the other side.”

Shaw continued to impress through the second half, busy, industrious, strong in the tackle. Looking like a man desperate to make up for lost time, almost five years after joining United, coming up to his 24th birthday. That hunger to improve and make the most of his talents this year has been evident to everyone who knows Shaw, and it is something that Lukaku spoke about last weekend, when he was endorsing Shaw as player of the season for the first time.

Lukaku spoke about the summer, when he was in Russia playing for Belgium at the World Cup and Shaw was on holiday in New York, having not been chosen for Gareth Southgate’s 23-man squad. “He was sending me videos of him running on the treadmill,” Lukaku said. “I got three videos and I saw someone who was going to come back and be good.”

The evidence of this hard work has been clear all season. “He scored in the first game of the season against Leicester City and he has never looked back,” as Lukaku put it. “You cannot look at Luke as a prospect now, at his age he is a top performer and is consistent. What more do you want from him?”