First Impressions

Ronald Koeman took time out from a hectic first pre-season with the Blues to tell Everton magazine about how the squad is shaping up, the upcoming trip to Germany and how he doesn’t pay any attention to transfer speculation...

- Ronald Koeman

First of all Ronald, how was the recent training camp in Austria?

It was very good. It was a nice place and the hotel was very good although maybe the weather wasn’t what we expected. But the temperature was fantastic to train in and the pitch we used was wonderful.

There was a lot of rain over there - did that affect your training sessions?

No, not really because their pitches are used to having that kind of rain and it’s Liverpool-weather so it wasn’t a big change! It’s better than hot weather with high temperatures because that makes it more difficult to do your physical part of the pre-season.

How important was it for you and the new staff to spend some quality time away with the players?

That’s always good because we have time to talk and we have time to do meetings and, with a new technical staff and a new manager, it’s good for us to learn about the players, about the character of the players. It also gives us a good feel about our under-21 players and that’s good because it makes decisions about the future and about the season when it starts much easier. We are very pleased to be part of Everton, a great club with a great history. We want the lads to show also that they are really happy to play for Everton because that makes the business a little bit more easy.

Do you enjoy pre-season?

Yes, I do because pre-season is always a period that you like to get back to after a good summer away. There is no pressure in pre-season, everyone gets an opportunity to start afresh and that makes it easy for the manager. You plan the football exercises and the physical exercises over five weeks and you can then be ready for the start of the Premier League.

Obviously, we’ve just had the Euros which means that you haven’t got all your squad back at the same time...