Inside Mark Robins’ Stoke City training camp with no Spain no gain

Stoke City’s Spanish team building might not be as rock and roll as football past but Mark Robins won’t underplay its importance.

‌Stoke are spending the best part of a week in Andalusia, where their manager will enjoy working them hard in the heat as they step up their warm-up for the new Championship season, which gets going on August 9.

‌There will be tough sessions and a chance to let their hair down with a quiz or barbecue, rather than sneaking out to nightclubs.

‌“You get a bit of everything and that’s really important,” said Robins, who is overseeing his first summer as Stoke boss.

“We had six weeks really from coming back through the door to the kick-off of the new season. It flies by. We’ve just had nearly eight weeks off in the close season and that went in the blink of an eye so you know this is going to go really quickly so we’ve got to get the work into players quickly and make sure we don’t waste any time.

“We have to get the togetherness as well so there will have to be some of that which is team building. That doesn’t mean going out and getting drunk because that’s a thing of the past – it means spending time together in maybe not a training environment. It might be something different, a quiz or a barbecue during down time, because there has to be some of that during this period. You can’t keep flogging them, they’ve got to be able to work, so they need a bit of rest in between.

“So there will be a bit of that but also be plenty of conversations being had and a few behind closed doors games that will get them more up to speed before we play in front of the public.”

Robins has previously taken Coventry City squads to Spain and, although the temperatures forecast are mid-20s over the next few days compared to the heatwave last month, it isn’t particularly planned as a pleasant place to exercise.

“It’s really important to go away anyway and we could have chosen a different destination but Spain has always been a place where you’re able to get that weather and really put them through it because it’s really tiring,” he said.

“Everyone knows when you go away on holiday that the sun tires you out anyway so while you’re working in that it makes it doubly difficult. That’s what you look for as well and the harder they work, the more they come through together, the more they’ll bond over it.”

“We had a few options of where to go and this one was the best one, I think. We also need to go to places where you’ve got opposition you can play against and this was a reasonably based camp from where we can go to places to play games.

“I think also that this year we’ve got the leagues starting a little bit staggered is an issue because it concertinas everything back, apart from for the Premier League or unless you’re playing against foreign opposition. It’s been quite a difficult planning process this season in terms of what I’ve been used to.”