Nicky Hayen encouraged by positive week in training ahead of Ajax friendly

Nicky Hayen has been pleased with the reaction of his Burnley players in training leading into today’s friendly against Ajax.

The Clarets’ new boss provided an honest reaction to his side’s 4-1 friendly defeat to Real Salt Lake in the third and final friendly of their US tour.

After the game, he pledged his side would look completely different within “14 days” as the new season approaches.

While we’ve only had a week back at Burnley’s Gawthorpe training base, Hayen has been a lot more encouraged by what he’s seen.

“The Salt Lake game is not like a reference for me,” he said. “We had already like nine days, we travelled a lot, we didn't train a lot.

“I observed a lot over there and it was the last game. I actually asked a lot of them in terms of energy, I tried to press high, but you also felt the altitude, the heat. They tried to execute it, but you saw that they were tired.

“At that point, it’s like: ‘okay, how do we react on the mental part? Are we strong enough to fight against that?’. If you take everything in account, it was a non-game for us, but it's not that I was surprised.

“But when we came back here, you saw immediately they had two-and-a-half days off. They came back with hunger. You see on the pitch they executed.

“The intensity is way higher than we had in the States and this is actually what pleased me the most and you see that they're in there.

“They ask questions, how we want to play over the pitch. Also, they come into the office: ‘can you show me something?’, so they're really, really willing to execute the things that we want, because they see that we want to be dominant on the ball.

“We're not just kicking a long ball and going for the second ball. It's also an option, and I don't say that we're never going to do this, because if we can beat an opponent like this, we will do it.

“But I want to give the players as many solutions as possible, so that they actually never feel like they’re under pressure. We always give you solutions and rather have five solutions than one.”

The Clarets take on Ajax at the Johan Cruyff Arena this afternoon, with the game kicking off at 1pm UK time.