Yan Valery has praised the facilities at Southampton and stated that players have ‘no excuse’ not to improve at the club.
Speaking to French news outlet RMC Sport, as quoted by GFFN, the 20-year-old discussed the difference between life at St Mary’s compared to his time at Rennes as a youngster.
Valery, who moved from France in 2015, burst onto the first-team scene at Southampton last season and has been involved in recent weeks following an injury to Cedric Soares.
The right-back is clearly grateful to Saints for the support – both on and off the pitch – he has received since his arrival and said:
The thing that impressed me the most were the facilities. The pitches, it felt like I had jumped into the future. You could immediately see the difference. The pitch was much better, the training centre has like 15 pitches. And even the way you train is completely different.
You arrive, and they give you iPads; on the iPads you can watch yourself in training back. You have everything to be successful. On the iPads, you have analysis on you, after a match, all the analysis on you that you could imagine.
After all the training sessions too, what you did well and what you didn’t do well. You also have, for example, how many minutes you played, how many kilometres you ran, really everything. You have everything to give your all. You have no excuse not to. I think it is fantastic.
If we are doing an 11 vs 11 in training, and the coach tells me certain things about positioning, I can reinforce that by watching the session back because sometimes it’s harder to see from your own perspective on the pitch. Honestly, you have no excuse, you can only improve there.
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Valery is correct. There may have been excuses for young players in the first team to struggle with the likes of Mauricio Pellegrino and Mark Hughes at the helm, but that is no longer the case.
With Ralph Hasenhuttl in charge, the best of the club’s academy graduates get their chances to impress, and Valery has certainly profited from the manager’s youth-centric focus.
Cedric may be the first-choice right-back when he is fit, but the Frenchman is clearly aware that how big a future he has at Southampton is in his own hands.
