Erik ten Hag is excited by what’s to come from Antony after the forward became the first Manchester United player to score in his first three Premier League games.
During the win over Everton on Sunday, the Brazilian calmly finished an excellent equaliser on 15 minutes before Cristiano Ronaldo notched his 700th club-career goal at the end of the first half to seal a 2-1 victory.
Antony impressed again during a battling 90 minutes and Ten Hag told reporters afterwards how pleased he was, not just with his attacking play, but his defensive work as well.
“We have to expect more from him,”
declared the manager. “He needs challenges, that’s why he came to the Premier League and he gets that here. He wants to play with the best players and the highest stress factors and against the best players.
“From there on he will step up and that’s what you see. [In the] First week he was scoring goals and he has done good stuff but I also see a lot of room for improvement in his game.
“What I was happy with is the goal [against Everton] was out of a moment of getting in behind – he has to do that more and use his pace.
”He is a good dribbler but he also has to make more variations and in the first game he was not always that good defending wise and but this time he was really good, he was really disciplined and had good positioning, good anticipation and good pressing and he had quite an impact on this team performance.”
The United boss also revealed more about the work he had done with the 22-year-old before he joined the Reds and how he'll continue to help him develop.
“He can go both ways with both feet. He has to work on that point,”
added Erik.
“We already did that in Amsterdam with him, working on that. He can cross with his right foot too but he’s a young player who we have to develop and he has to develop himself too.”