Oxford United men’s First Team squad reported back today for their first day of pre-season training.
The U’s returned to the Training Ground for the first time ahead of the 23/24 season and hit the ground running with testing in the gym throughout the morning and then a series of runs later in the day.
The recent heatwave had relented a little and there were plenty of smiles as photographer Steve Edmunds’ Gallery shows above.
New faces Jordan Thorniley, Josh McEachran and Ruben Rodrigues were all to the fore although new keeper James Beadle won’t link up with the group until a little later; the Brighton keeper spent the summer away with the England Under 20 squad in Argentina and will train with his parent club over the next few days before linking up with the U’s for their trip to Spain next week.
Harry Routledge, who heads up the club's Athletic Performance team has worked closely with Liam Manning and the coaching staff to pull together the pre-season schedule, and he told us
“We have six weeks before the first game. The boys will get exposed to a combination of football and fitness work. There will be team activities and they will spend a lot of time together. These days the onus is on them to come back in good shape and ready for the first day and you could see they had done that and were in good shape.
“Obviously it's the first pre-season with a different manager so some things are going to be different and there's been a lot of planning, which probably started 6 to 8 weeks before the season finished, especially in terms of getting games arranged and what next week’s pre-season camp will look like. It’s very detailed and it’s data informed rather than totally data driven, I’d say. The data will inform our decision making but you also trust what you can see each day. From both points of view today was a good start.”
See the full version of this interview with Harry in iFollow right now.