Hull City’s players were back on the training pitch on Wednesday for the second full day of their pre-season training camp in Slovenia.
The Tigers’ stars had another two-hour session in the Pohorje hills on a gloriously sunny morning, with the emphasis on moving the ball quickly, playing in tight spaces and transition, as they get ready for their first season back in the Premier League.
New signing Oscar Zambrano was on show in his first session after his permanent move back to City was confirmed on Tuesday evening.
Here, City reporter Barry Cooper delivers his latest update from inside the Tigers camp…
Charlie’s back
The influential central defender spent his first day out with the squad after arriving on Tuesday, but didn’t take part in training. Instead, he was doing some light exercises on the side of the pitch with one of the physios.
Hughes continues to recover from hernia surgery earlier in the summer, and remains on his own recovery programme of work.
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Sergej’s many laps
The City boss is often spotted walking laps of the training field with one of his staff in a bid to get in shape ahead of the new campaign. Jakirovic joked that he needed to lose some weight after spending a month on the beach in Croatia following promotion. He’s currently clocking up around 15,000 steps a day.
Moving it quickly
After the early warming up, the players split into groups of four into a small diamond pitch with two small goals, and the idea was to move the ball at speed, one touch and with options. Similar to the situations Pep Guardiola made famous at Barcelona, playing in triangles all across the pitch, always having at least two options for the man on the ball.
Getting ready
Incorporated into the game situations the players were involved in, centred around the new rules that will come into force from the start of the new season, and that’s the five-second rule from throw-ins. We saw it in the World Cup, where teams were penalised for taking too long to restart the game. Jakirovic’s players were getting familiar with that during their five nine-minute games.
Dave’s drenching
Undoubtedly, one of the characters of the group, David Akintola, was in the wrong place at the wrong time when one of the powerful water cannons came on at the instruction of Dean Holden.
Thankfully, given how close he was, there was no injury, and the winger was able to finish off a lovely flowing move with a crisply-driven effort into the top corner of Jack Butland’s net.
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