Jesse Lingard believes Manchester United have rediscovered their freedom after their second consecutive win, and three-goal performance, against Stoke City on Tuesday.

The winger scored United’s first goal against Stoke, breaking the team’s run of first-half home goal droughts that stretched back 12 matches, in perhaps their most expansive display of the season as they followed up their 3-1 win FA Cup win at Derby County with an emphatic 3-0 win at Old Trafford.

The victory also helped ease the pressure on Louis van Gaal, who has faced strong criticism for United’s bland style of football this season. Asked after Tuesday’s match whether the manager had granted the team more freedom, Lingard said: “Now we are playing with that freedom and we’ve got a lot of energy in the team and to be mixing up the positions and entertain the crowd we’ll have to do that, but it’s that freedom that we have. It’s a weight off our shoulders and we can just play football now.

“With the results, it’s not the manager’s fault, we’ve been on the pitch playing. Today, you’ve seen that we can get the results we need if we put our mind to it.”

Fans had turned on the team and manager after the 1-0 home defeat by Southampton on 23 January and Lingard acknowledged that can make things more difficult for players, arguing that it was important not to let the crowd dictate the team’s style. “It’s hard, but we have to concentrate on the game,” he said. “We can’t let the fans influence how we play.

“We are on the pitch. We have to play the game as we see it at the time, we showed great character to do that in the last game and were unfortunate not to get the result against Southampton but we bounced back against Derby and today against Stoke.”

Lingard also had praise for Cameron Borthwick-Jackson, who set up his opener against Stoke, on breaking through into the first team: “He’s come on leaps and bounds from when I knew him in the under-18s. He’s a relaxed and composed lad, he’s got a great cross in him and he gets forward a lot. His defending is 10 out of 10 as well, so he’s doing very well at the minute. The manager likes youth and when we’ve had a chance we’ve taken it, so I don’t see why the next batch can’t come through [and do the same].”