Will Lankshear's Stunning Debut Volley for Middlesbrough
Will Lankshear needed just 61 minutes in a Middlesbrough shirt to show exactly why the club were willing to gamble £10 million on his potential. One clean swing of his boot, one ruthless volley, and Wrexham were out of the EFL Cup.
For Kim Hellberg, it confirmed a suspicion that had been growing since the first training session.
“The best finisher I’ve ever seen,” the Middlesbrough head coach told BBC Radio Tees, not softening the claim with a smile or a caveat. Left foot, right foot, headers – Hellberg has watched enough in the past few weeks to go all in on the 21-year-old.
The tie itself was tight, edgy, and short on clear chances. These two sides were separated by just two places in the Championship last season, and it showed in the balance of the contest. Neither blinked for an hour.
Then Lankshear found his moment.
When the ball dropped for him in the 61st minute, he didn’t snatch, didn’t rush. He set himself and ripped a volley past the keeper with the kind of certainty that turns a half-chance into a match-winner. One strike, one glimpse of why Tottenham Hotspur had rated him, and why Middlesbrough were prepared to reshape their attack around him.
Hellberg had already seen that ice-cold edge behind closed doors.
“I’ve seen the trainings and he’s the best finisher I’ve ever seen in terms of left foot, right foot, how hard he shoots, his headers,” the Swede said. “I’m not surprised he can do these goals.”
That’s not the language of a coach trying to talk up a fragile youngster. It’s the language of a man who believes his club may have landed a genuine difference-maker.
Middlesbrough’s need for that kind of player is obvious. Their approach play last season was often slick, at times outstanding, but promotion slipped away in May and the post-mortem was brutal: not enough cutting edge when it really mattered. This summer has been about adding teeth to the pretty patterns.
Lankshear is the headline piece of that plan. An England Under-21 forward arriving from a Premier League giant, a fee nudging eight figures, and the expectation that he will turn half-chances into headlines.
Yet, for Hellberg, the finishing is only half the story.
“The best thing with him is how he is as a person,” he said. “How hard he works, how much he wants to learn, how quick he is to adapt. That’s been absolutely brilliant.
“Add on to that, the quality he has, he’s an unbelievable player and he’s just going to get better.”
Those are the traits that win managers over in the long slog of a Championship season: the forward who chases lost causes on a wet Tuesday, who stays behind after training, who treats a first-round EFL Cup tie like a cup final.
On this evidence, Lankshear has walked into a dressing room still carrying the weight of last season’s near-miss and offered something simple but priceless – conviction. In his movement, in his finishing, in the way he attacks the ball, there is a clarity that Middlesbrough have craved.
One game does not make a season, never mind a career. But one goal, on one night, can change the mood around a club.
For Middlesbrough, and for Hellberg, Lankshear’s volley might be the first piece of proof that the pain of May is being turned into something far more dangerous.
