Jonny Evans thought he knew all about scrutiny after eight years in the white heat of Manchester United but the last two weeks have taken it to another level.
New manager Louis van Gaal's relentless quest to analyse which of his players will belong to the club's future have seen him install video surveillance equipment at the training facilities where the club have worked across the US. The scrutiny of it has been painstaking.
"I think it's a lot more detailed at the training ground," Evans said of the battery of camera equipment which also awaits the players back home. "They have spent thousands on it and a few of the lads have seen HD cameras around the pitch."
Van Gaal has ordered an investment of 500,000 ($989,000) on this technology above the practice pitches in Manchester. The suspicion among United's players is that he was having footage sent to him when he was at the World Cup with the Netherlands, allowing him to begin his assessments while the players worked with assistants Ryan Giggs and Albert Stuivenberg. This scrutiny of training sessions is something new to British football.
The feeling among the players is that Van Gaal, who had similar surveillance gear at Bayern Munich, will be looking to use the footage to assess when players are fatigued. But their concentration levels are just as likely to be scrutinised.
