Harry Maguire has been enjoying working with Erik ten Hag and has revealed that a focus has been put on improving the side's physicality in pre-season.
New Manchester United boss Ten Hag has been running the rule over his players for the last couple of weeks but will finally get to see them put his instructions into action on Tuesday in the first friendly of pre-season. United take on fierce foes Liverpool in Thailand.
The Dutchman has the unenviable task of turning United's fortunes around off the back of their worst-ever Premier League campaign, during which a common complaint was that the players did not look fit enough and were often outworked by their opponents. According to Maguire, that's an area Ten Hag has immediately looked to address.
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"I think training’s been tough, Maguire told United's official site. "As a group of players, we understand where we’re at physically.
"We’ve come back in good shape, but we need to get fitter. I think, on behalf of us last year, we know we need to do more: we need to be fitter, we need to be physically better and we need to be mentally better. So this is a perfect tour for us to enable that and to improve on our fitness and our style of play.
"I think the first couple of weeks is all about volume and working on yourself physically. We’ve also had a lot of tactical ideas thrown in there too.
"We know the season is four weeks away and it comes around quick, so you’ve got to work on both as [much] as you can but in the first few weeks, [working] physically is the most important.
"He has high demands and it’s demands we look forward to and we’re willing to take on and learn and improve. I’m sure he’ll have a big impact at this club. We’re all looking forward to working under him and we look forward to what the future brings.”
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