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Signing 'shining light' Will Lankshear suggests Middlesbrough have learned their lesson Will Lankshear has already impressed many at Middlesbrough Oh boy, what a dream debut! Will Lankshear provided the answer to everybody’s prayers with his superb action-packed competitive opener against Wrexham. Now we can’t wait to see him in action against Lincoln City on Saturday. If nothing else he’ll put bums on seats. Might even be a capacity crowd. It was pleasing that the whole Boro side played really well in the Carabao Cup tie. Now they have to step it up for the promotion push. Lankshear has clearly emerged as the missing link in the team. All he wanted to do was to score goals. Magic. It was interesting to hear him say in an interview afterwards that he 'should have had three or four'. That’s maybe pushing it a bit but he did get in a few efforts at goal and the magnificent strike he did put away was only from a half chance. The bonus is that Lankshear already appears to have his feet under the table on Teesside. He loves the club, likes his new team-mates and feels part of a unit which is going places. It this is a taster of what Lankshear can do then maybe Middlesbrough should wrap him in cotton wool in between games. Now we await with baited breath to see how his potential partnership with Kyle Joseph works out. The former Hull City man had little chance to shine against Wrexham, but he did score a few goals for the Tigers last term and will already have gathered that there is a wealth of goals available to any player who can take advantage of Boro’s creative style of play. When you consider that we’ve also got Morgan Whittaker, Leo Castledine and eventually Tommy Conway to come then there should be no problems at all on the goals front. One thing which was noticeable against Wrexham was that the crossing was a lot better than we can recall at any time last season. Boro got in lots of crosses, many of them decent ones, and caused Wrexham plenty of problems. Lincoln have strengthened their defence during the summer. As their squad sat squirming and watching the Boro match on TV last Friday night, they will have had no doubts that they will have their work cut out to keep out Boro on Saturday. The quality of the crossing from both flanks showed that Boro have been busy adding another string to their bow. This is a very important innovation considering that Kim Hellberg’s system remained otherwise very similar in the cup tie. Boro still concentrated on making a lot of short passes in and around the box which didn’t always get them anywhere. However, more long balls are appearing and Lankshear and Castledine in particular often took advantage of the extra space which this allowed. Hellberg learned towards the end of last season that you can’t afford to be a one-trick pony as a head coach. The changes have begun to come. Hopefully we will see more of them in the future. But for the time being Boro’s prospects for a big campaign look to virtually be in place – with Lankshear the shining light. ------------- Get Teesside Live Premium now for just £1 HERE – exclusive Boro news and features, transfer notebooks, comment and analysis from Eric Paylor, plus an ad-lite experience Join our WhatsApp community to get all the breaking news and best analysis sent straight to your phone by clicking here to subscribe. Your information will be hidden, you'll only ever receive messages from the Teesside Live sports team, and you can leave any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'Exit group'. If you’re curious, you can read our Privacy Notice.