Manchester United signing Odion Ighalo has called on a fitness expert to get him ready for his debut next week.
With the club's first-team stars in the middle of a winter break, he has called on performance coach Wayne Richardson to get him ready for the rigours of the Premier League before linking up with his team-mates to fly to Marbella on Saturday morning.
Richardson told the Daily Star: "He is doing a transition from doing pre-season in China, it was only the second or third week into pre-season when he came over.
"So we have been doing endurance work, we have done some testing, we have done 20 metre sprint tests, some isometric testing for his hamstrings, worked on his arm strength, shoulder strength, upper body strength.
"On Thursday, he did a lot of reaction work in short spaces. I brought in a non-league defender to train against him and shadow him, to help him deal with the rigors of the Premier League.
"He has been coming up to speed with that as well, his turning speed.
"He has been doing double sessions as well. He has been doing some football work with a one-to-one coach, and then coming in with me, whether it be the morning after or the afternoon as well.
"He wants to hit the ground running and he has been a fantastic professional as well.
"You get a sneaky feeling with a lot of players when they come in that they are coming in for a reason, but this guy, since his agent has got off the plane and his agent has contacted us, he has come in with this attitude of 'what do you want me to do?'
"He was in late Thursday night, he was there gone quarter past 10. That was after doing a session during the day for two hours.
"In terms of his performance, he knows where he wants to be. It's been really good. He wants to hit the ground running."
Richardson has also revealed how Ighalo tracked him down just hours after landing in the UK to start his training regime.
"He landed on the Sunday and by the Monday morning he was requesting to come in," he added.
"They asked to line up a week's training camp and rather than train with somebody that he didn't know, the agent (Atta Aneke) recommended me to work with him.
"Straight away, we were able to sit down with him what his week was going to look like as well in terms of his training.
"The agent played a big part in that because we have a good relationship with the agent."
