Anthony Elanga had effectively decided to leave Manchester United on loan prior to his first appearance under Ralf Rangnick.
Elanga scored his third goal of the campaign to secure a fortuitous draw for United in their Champions League round-of-16 tie at Atletico Madrid, becoming the club's youngest goalscorer in the competition's knockout stages.
The 19-year-old struck against Brentford last month, as well as at Leeds on Sunday, and sustained his encouraging form in Madrid under Rangnick, who has played the Swede 13 times this term.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer gave Elanga his debut in May but only selected him once this term, having decided against loaning the forward in the summer after an impressive pre-season. Elanga is expected to be called up to the Sweden squad for the first time next month and was prepared to temporarily leave United in the January transfer window.
"Apart from his name, of course, I had heard about his name before but not as a player because he didn't play for Manchester United," Rangnick said of Elanga. "The first training session the night before the Crystal Palace game, he was the player with the best training performance.
"I asked my staff members about him and found out he had almost already decided to leave the club on loan. So a week after the Palace game (he came on in the game) I said, listen, I want you stay and see how you are doing in the training games until the end of the closure of the transfer window.
"I think right now he has just shown what is possible in football with the right mentality, the right approach, this is exactly what he did and what he always does in every training session.
"In all the games he has played so far, he just shows that he's playing with all the passion and all the fun, he's just enjoying himself on the pitch. He's fully aware of his strengths, of his assets and his weapons. He is always trying to play and show those weapons. This is what he did today.
"Apart from the goal he scored, he had two or three great runs and whenever he did that you could all of a sudden see Atletico had problems with this kind of approach.
"But we have to show this with other positions as well, not only Anthony Elanga. We have to play like this in every single position and if we want to proceed in the qualifiers in the next few weeks at Old Trafford we have to play exactly like that."
