Manchester United: Louis van Gaal hails 'improved' pre-season in America

Louis van Gaal has claimed Manchester United have improved their America pre-season tour in order to avoid the mistakes of last season when poor preparation during the summer led his side to a slow start to the campaign.

United won the International Champions Cup after beating Liverpool in the final of the pre-season tournament but the Dutch boss expressed his disapproval with the preparation, as his players spent too much time crossing time zones, playing three group matches in Colorado, Maryland and Michigan before travelling to Florida for the final.

"We have to prepare the season and when you have commercial activities and dreadful distances, having to fly a lot and the jet lag, it is not very positive for a good preparation," Van Gaal said at the time.

The United manager's views were vindicated after a tough start to the campaign when his side failed to win a game until the fourth Premier League match of the 2014-15 season and were knocked out of the League Cup after a humiliating 4-0 defeat to MK Dons.

The Dutch boss said he made changes ahead of the new tour in America to avoid those mistakes and prepare the players for a strong start to the next campaign.

"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," the boss said to MUTV.

"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 Premier League giants will play in Los Angeles, Denver, Washington, Detroit and Miami but will be organised in two main base camps in the cooler climes of Seattle and San Francisco Bay.

Van Gaal said: "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."

United will begin their defence of the International Champions Cup with a fixture against Club America at CenturyLink Field in Seattle on 17 July.