Fitness coach Simon Thadani is the latest member of Town staff to take advantage of the club's continuing link with La Liga side Valencia. Specialist skills coach Steve Foley has previously made the trip on a number of occasions and has a flat in the Spanish city.

Thadani, who speaks Spanish fluently, told the club site that the trip was a fact-finding mission: "The manager is very keen for us to expand our knowledge, so I went over to Valencia a couple of weeks ago and spent a very interesting day there.

"I spent the day talking to their fitness coaches and looking at the way their players train. I was shown the fitness stats of their players to see how they compared with ours and listened to their opinions and ideas.

"I also had the opportunity to speak to their goalkeeping coach [Jose Ochotorena], who worked at Liverpool under Rafa Benitez and got feedback on how they did things at Liverpool as well.

"Football-wise, the drills were very similar to what we do at the club, but it was a great education to watch some of the top players in Spain and Europe working close at hand, guys like David Villa.

"It obviously helped that we could converse in Spanish and it was a very worthwhile trip. It reassured me that we are doing things the right way with our fitness work and there are plans for the Valencia guys to come over and see how we work at some stage."

Last week, TWTD revealed that chief scout Simon Hunt was also spending time in Spain as the Blues look for new recruits ahead of the January transfer window.

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