“He brought real energy, real purpose with his running and he had a terrific chance,” Manning told ESPN. “I was pleased with the impact he made.

He’s definitely pushing for a start after seeing the minutes over the weekend. “He’ll benefit greatly from getting minutes in his legs and playing at Carrow Road.

That could be another significant advantage for him. He’s heading in the right direction. We just have to make sure he keeps going that way. “We need to put him in positions where he can bring his strengths.

When you look at it, that’s his movement, running depth, and cross-attacking technique. We have to get him in areas of the pitch to do that, whether it be as the nine, or whether it be from slightly deeper.

“These are the topics we discuss when it comes to connecting with other players so that they understand Mathias’ goals and how he plays on the pitch.

“That was only his second or third game, and we’ll need time to figure out how to use him when the ball is wide or central.

We have to provide clarity to the other players, but it will also come from developing those relationships on the pitch.” Manning, speaking at Colney on Monday, highlighted his side’s lack of cutting edge in a 2-1 Championship defeat on the opening day.

“Ultimately the most important statistic is the number of goals, right?” he commented.

“But when you dig a little deeper, Vlad (Kovacevic) had one save to make and their custodian had two. When you look at the corners, there won’t be much in it. “I thought they’d gotten into our box a little more, which we defended admirably.

Strangely, it was probably the first time I had played Millwall and felt relatively at ease defending set pieces. I thought we were great at it.

“We had first-half control, but we need to convert that into better chances, better progression, and more final-third box entries.

How do we do it, because that is the most difficult part? We did a great job, and I considered pushing them back into a block.

“So, how do you break that block down? We tried it several times. We got into some half-decent areas in the second half, with Jack (Stacey) on the right and Jovon (Makama) coming on.

“There was one that went to Ben Chrisene’s back post. A lot of the work we’ll do from here is about converting that control into better opportunities.”

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