Van Gaal Keen To Integrate Young Players

Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal is determined to continue integrating Academy products into his first-team squad.

The boss has been delighted with the recent impact made by Jesse Lingard, who was inches away from scoring a dramatic winner when hitting the bar in Sunday's Manchester derby, and regularly discusses which youngsters to promote with assistant manager Ryan Giggs and youth coach Nicky Butt.

Lingard and Andreas Pereira played all 120 minutes of the Capital One Cup defeat to Middlesbrough on Wednesday and the latter was the only United player to convert his penalty during the shoot-out.

"It has always been part of my own philosophy and that of the club to give opportunities to youth players," wrote the boss in his column for United Review, the official match programme.

"Jesse Lingard is one of those players who was given a chance to play in the last three matches and he has taken that opportunity to show what he is capable of and to prove that he deserves to be a member of the first-team squad.

"I have been delighted with the progress that he continues to make, along with Andreas Pereira, who played against Ipswich Town and scored his first senior competitive goal. With advice from Ryan Giggs and Nicky Butt, I regularly invite members of the development squad to train alongside the first team. It gives them a chance to step up their training and to improve their technical ability.

"A good example would be Paddy McNair. He trained a number of times with the first team, which helped him prepare physically and mentally, so that it wasn’t such a big step when he was called upon to the first team."