Manchester United goalkeeper Tom Heaton has opened up on working under Jelle ten Roulewaar.
There has been a lot of change at United this summer. The focus is on having the best in class for each department – on and off the pitch – which we have seen with the appointments of Jason Wilcox, Dan Ashworth and Omar Berrada.
The coaching department has been altered too. Rene Hake and Ruud van Nistelrooy join as Erik ten Hag’s assistants and Andreas Georgson arrived on Friday, leaving Norwegian outfit Lillestrom after eight months in charge.
Another coach to join the set-up this summer is Jelle ten Rouwelaar. The 43-year-old Dutchman has left a good first impression on Heaton, who is currently our third-choice goalkeeper.
Heaton has been working with Ten Rouwelaar since he returned to Carrington this summer. They are both in the US as part of the tour, with United taking on Arsenal in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Heaton said: “I’ve really enjoyed the sessions. They are different.
“He works more on cognitive basic calls, where it’s making you think quite a bit. So on my first warm-up day, he and I went out for half an hour and it was a lot of opposites.
“So there’d be a blue cone, a yellow cone, and it was a case of doing the opposite — if he shouts blue you have to go to yellow.
“Then he passed me the ball and if he said right, it’d be left, and then the progression would be left, left, but the first one wouldn’t be an opposite and the second one would be an opposite.
“I was like; ‘What?’ But it’s good. It does make you think so you’re not just going through the motions.”
Heaton added: “I think you can see that games are changing a little bit. It’s less off the cuff now. Teams are very structured in terms of what they do in their press, whether they press with one man, two, three.
“So you’ve got to work it out, you’ve got to count their numbers. You’ve got to count the numbers in your back line and ask; ‘Are we going big, are we going short, where are they coming from, who’s looking to jump?’.
“So I think the training is based around being more perceptive of what’s in front of you.”
Ten Rouwelaar replaced Richard Hartis when he joined United from Ajax earlier this summer.
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