ROSLER HAILS IN-FORM STRIKER WOOD

ROSLER HAILS IN-FORM STRIKER WOOD

Head coach's praise for Saturday's match-winner...

Uwe Rosler has hailed Chris Wood for "living up to his responsibilities" of being a key player at the club after the striker made it three goals from as many games in Saturday’s victory at Derby County.

Wood, a summer signing from Leicester City, netted a rasping late winner at the iPro Stadium to seal United’s first three points of the new season.

The 23-year-old, who has been ever-present in the Championship so far this term, entered the game in a rich vein of form after also getting on the scoresheet in the recent draws with Bristol City and Sheffield Wednesday.

“I’m happy for him,” Rosler said. “I was a striker myself – I know how important it is for strikers to score goals.

“For me as a coach, I’m happy with him anyway because he lives up to his responsibilities to be a big player for us.

“He’s not a squad player anymore like he had been at previous clubs; he is now a 40+ game player.

“With that comes the responsibility to have a level of performance every single week. He’s living up to that and it is fantastic how quickly he’s adjusted to that.

“Goals will come. I see him in training; I see his strengths and that can only be good for him.”

United now face a two-week break as the likes of Stuart Dallas and Lewis Cook head away on international duty, and Rosler believes there are positives and negatives to having a weekend without a game.

“It can go both ways,” he said. “From the coaching point of view it allows us to reinforce things over the two weeks that we couldn’t do in the last few weeks because we were playing, resting, playing resting.

“Mentally, I think winning that game on Saturday – at a place like Derby who are big favourites for promotion – I would have liked to have kept that momentum going.”

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