Paolo di Canio is determined to increase the stamina of his Sunderland players.

The Wearsiders' manager says his new fitness regime was starting to pay dividends at the end of last season - because he got his side covering at least 7.5km in every training session.

Di Canio claims that is 5k more than players did during light sessions under previous boss Martin O'Neill, and the hard leg-work will continue next season.

He said: "We monitor every training session with the GPS system and the statistics we got showed a big change. Every player covers approximately nine kilometres during a game, with 1.6km of that at a high intensity over 25 yards.

"The GPS system shows trends. During the training session, individually, they used to cover 2.6km, including the warm-up. Now we cover 7.5km, even in the light sessions. That's nearly three times.

"How can you run 9km against your opponents if you're not doing something similar in training? The intense moments previously were 230 metres, now we cover 1,200 metres.

"How can you do it in the game if you don't prepare yourself during the week? You cannot be ready. "If you try, you get injured, or are tired after 10 minutes, so that is why we place such store on working so hard in training.

"It is all about preparation. I believe we saw an improvement in the last few weeks of the season and I believe we will see it even more next season.

"Instead of two very light training sessions, it's five very heavy sessions."