Adam Lawrence raves about Shea Lacey following dazzling Sunderland display | OneFootball

Manchester United Under-21 boss Adam Lawrence was full of praise for Shea Lacey after his sensational performance in Sunday’s 3-2 victory over Sunderland.

United sink Sunderland

Chido Obi broke the deadlock inside 14 minutes when he got on the end of a ball from Jack Moorhouse and buried it into the bottom corner.

Moments later, Moorhouse and Lacey combined well, allowing Jack Fletcher to pounce on the rebound and make it 2–0 to United. But Sunderland pulled one back not too long after to ensure United didn’t run away with the game.

The match then settled into a balanced contest as both sides pressed for an opening, yet United ultimately had the last laugh, with Lacey restoring their two‑goal advantage via a sharp cut and finish at the near post.

Refusing to give up, Sunderland scored in the 72nd minute to make it 3-2. Luckily, United held on to book their place in the Premier League 2 play-off quarter-finals.

Lawrence spoke to the Manchester Evening News and hailed Lacey’s contributions, while also commenting on the 19-year-old’s development. Lacey is considered a first-team player but still drops down to youth games for minutes.

Lawrence lauds Lacey

The United coach told MEN, “I thought overall it was a really good performance. I think if you’re looking at Shea in this recent period, I think he’s playing with a lot of maturity. And you can see that training with the first-team players and being around their programme consistently is definitely helping him in a lot of areas of his game.”

“His all-round performances today in terms of the consistency of his levels.”

“There are always going to be a couple of bits around his decision-making and maybe being reliable in certain situations, but on the whole, I thought it was a really, really good performance. He got his goal, and he looked like a real threat at the top end of the pitch.”

Lawrence credited the United staff for the progress Lacey is making physically.

“Credit to all the staff who work behind the scenes in terms of managing him, all the sports science and medical staff, just in terms of where he’s gotten himself to, and then naturally, he’s a young man and maturing all the time as well. Sometimes we forget he is a young man and he’s going through those years of growth. But in terms of that maturity, it’s something we’ve definitely seen an improvement with on and off the pitch, so hopefully he will continue to build on that and take confidence from it.”

There were multiple moments when United seemed headed for a routine victory, but they kept giving the Black Cats a route back into the game. Lawrence identified this as a key area to work on.

“Sunderland are a good side, and I thought they played some good stuff, but I think the biggest lesson in terms of the team stuff is when we’ve got those two goal leads, so we’ve gone 2-1 and we’ve gone 3-1 today, and we had that similar one with the Real Madrid game we were 2-0 up.”

“You then give the opposition moments and in terms of the decision-making and the quality of the moments, then you give the opposition an opportunity, they take it and then you turn the game edgy. So, in all honesty, in the last part of the game, they could have scored, and it could have gone to extra time. We’ve managed to see the game out and obviously get the win.”

“But the biggest lessons, if we want to get to the right nitty-gritty of this, would be to eradicate those mistakes and make sure that when we’ve got that two-goal lead, or a healthy lead, that we make sure that we continue with that dominance and see the game out properly.”

Lacey made his United first-team debut in December when he came on as a substitute against Aston Villa. Ruben Amorim was the manager at the time.

Feature image Carl Recine via Getty Images

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