Incoming head of medical services Gary Lewin believes his new club have got the balance right in prioritising matches over marketing in their preseason preparations.
The Hammers return to pre-season on July 15th before taking on Werder Bremen in back-to-back games at the end of the month followed by a clash against Manchester City in Iceland in early August.
Lewin – the current first-team physiotherapist for the England national team – believes that while other clubs may be jet setting across the world for pre-season, staying in Europe on focusing on the football can only be a good thing for the club ahead of the new season.
“Over the last few years it has become common for teams to travel around the world for pre-season tours and matches that have a commercial element to them and so, from my point of view, it was fantastic to come here and see that we are going to Austria and Germany for purely fitness and football,” Lewin said in a statement on the official club website.
“It means that I will have time to really get to know the players, and we can have that real consistency of training. We’re based in one place on each trip, there isn’t much travelling, and everything is organised for the benefit of the players.”
Having been disrupted by the early start of the Europa League campaign over the past two seasons, he Hammers – albeit they will be disappointed not to be in Europe – can now instead focus solely on preparing for the 2017/18 campaign.
Lewin added: “This year we can set in stone what we are doing, and have a pre-conceived plan all the way through to August 12. We can all be on the same page, with the same levels of fitness and, hopefully, have everyone relatively injury-free and ready to go.”
