Juan Mata reflected on his wonderful assist for Chris Smalling's winner against Wolfsburg as teammate Daley Blind declared the Spaniard is "a joy to watch."

The former Chelsea player had already scored United's equaliser from the penalty spot before his backheel volley confounded the Wolfsburg defence and Smalling ran on to it to finish.

"The ball came to me and I had a feeling there could be someone at the back post and Chris took it really well," Mata told UEFA.com.

Mata, who was in and out of the United team last season, has been an ever present in the current campaign and has scored four goals.

"The truth is I feel really good right now," he added. "I just hope this moment continues and I can carry on in this vein. I am enjoying it, the team are winning and we're in good shape."

The versatile Blind, who started United's 2-1 victory over the German Cup winners in defence and ended the game in midfield, led the praise for his colleague.

"Mata is a joy to watch," the Dutchman said. "He is a great football player, a great guy as well and he was very important for us and the team."

Juan Mata had another fine game for Manchester United. Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images

Meanwhile, midfielder Morgan Schneiderlin believes United have answered their critics with a run of victories and have become more prolific as they have won their last four games in all competitions, scoring 11 goals.

"I do feel we are improving," Schneiderlin said. "At the start of the season people were talking about good results and not very good performances.

"In the last few weeks I don't hear this anymore, they don't complain about the style of play or anything and that is because we have improved.

"We can see that on the training pitch and we can see that in the games. We are much better on the ball, we are doing better things and sometimes we play very high quality football. But there are still some things we can improve."