Poacher, creator and saboteur, how Jesse Lingard's diverse talents grease the Manchester United wheels

The game’s not even started yet, but already both Manchester United full-backs are perched on the halfway line, waiting for Tottenham to kick-off. And at the edge of the centre circle stands Jesse Lingard, poised like a sprinter, primed for Mike Dean’s whistle. When it finally arrives, he slingshots forward at full pelt, deep into Tottenham territory, chasing down Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld almost before the ball has reached them. For this is the new Manchester United, and they hunt you down.

At the end of a bruising, exhilarating win for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side, the headlines naturally went to the usual suspects. Their wondrous boy-bullet Marcus Rashford, who scored the only goal. Paul Pogba, their midfield Peter Pan, who set it up with the sort of pass you put on a T-shirt. And of course their grasshopper-green goalkeeper David de Gea, who during the last half-hour produced the sort of performance that makes opposition teams puff out their cheeks, quietly shake their heads and wonder whether they took up the right sport. Even as Tottenham ploughed forward in search of an equaliser, there was a sort of beautiful futility to it all, like trying to drink rain.

So yes, United got a touch lucky towards the end. And yet perhaps, in the rush to anoint Solskjaer as a sort of good luck charm, hauling United back into Champions League contention through the power of hugs and good vibes alone, it was easy to overlook one of his more subtle tweaks. In recent games Lingard has been deployed further forward, in a sort of advanced hunter-gatherer role. Here again at Wembley, as Rashford and Anthony Martial peeled to the flanks, Lingard was United’s chief saboteur, leading the press and taking it wherever he needed to.

A measure of how well Lingard managed to hem Tottenham in was his effect on Harry Winks. Against Chelsea in the League Cup on Tuesday night, Harry Winks was Tottenham’s main outlet, dropping deep, gathering the ball from the defence, and moving it through midfield. That night, no Tottenham player had more touches. On Sunday, Winks was only their sixth most influential player in terms of touches, as Lingard’s relentless hustle forced Spurs wide, sideways, and into less fruitful areas.

“We’re very organised,” he said afterwards. “We want to attack, we want to make those runs forward. The midfielders are running forward and we’re putting other teams under pressure. It’s working, and we need to carry it on. We’ve been practising all week in Dubai with the formation. Tactically it was great in the first half.”

It’s a role that more and more Premier League teams seem to be employing: the attacking spoiler, the false forward, the sort of position where you’re never quite sure whether you’re supposed to be marking him or he’s supposed to be marking you. Roberto Firmino at Liverpool is the obvious parallel; Dele Alli has performed a similar sort of function this season. Paulinho used to do it for Barcelona quite a bit. Even N’Golo Kante’s more advanced role at Chelsea bears certain similarities, not least in the way he is given the licence to pinpoint the opposition’s deep-lying creators and deny them space.

It’s not a role for every opponent or every situation. Brighton, United’s next opponents, give you precious little time to chase down in that area of the pitch, funnelling the ball out of defence as quickly as possible. But in these sorts of games, against an opponent that wants to build moves, Lingard can be exceptionally annoying. And besides, the great thing about Lingard is he can really do whatever you ask him to: wide forward, late-arriving penalty box poacher, deep-lying creator, channel-pivot, painter-decorator. Has he passed his forklift driver’s test? He gives the tests.

All of which adds up to a player who still – even after a successful World Cup – feels a touch underappreciated. In reality, he’s one of the linchpins to this United squad, the grease that makes everyone else around him function just a little better, perhaps even the key to Solskjaer-ball, with his high energy, close control and unfussy distribution. “He’s got us playing with confidence,” Lingard said. “If you lose the ball, win it back. If you make a mistake, doesn’t matter. Go again and get the ball.” And the next time United kick off, you can bet he’ll be right there, toes on the white line, ready to pounce.