Compared to last year Louis van Gaal believes changes to Manchester United's summer schedule will help his side get off to the best possible start next season.

United are set to be based predominantly in the Seattle and San Francisco Bay areas as they train and participate in the International Champions Cup.

Van Gaal told MUTV: "When you see our pre-season last year in the United States of America, we won everything playing against big, top clubs, and then we had to play our first Premier League match against Swansea City and we lost.

"That cannot happen next year. The most important aspect is building up our team with individual players, so they are thinking like a team, but also we need fitness and match rhythm and therefore we have to play matches, but we also have to train.

"The problem was, when we went to America last year, we didn't have so many times to train because we had to fly and travel a lot.

"Now, though, we have improved our America tour because we have two base camps and we are at the other side of America, so we have lower temperatures and can build up our fitness better.

"Last year we had a lot of time differences, you cannot then train your body properly. Therefore, it was not good.

"Now we are always in the same base camps so we have no time difference and we have chosen our hotel nearby the training accommodation. So it is now more easy to train twice a day and that is very important in pre-season."