Sandro Tonali says what he found hardest about his early days at Newcastle United
Sandro Tonali had a bizarre start to life as a Newcastle United player following his move from AC Milan.
The Italian scored a goal on his Premier League debut, giving us a taste of the quality player we'd snapped up, but just a handful of games later, we'd lose him for 10 months after he was hit with a ban after breaching gambling rules.
In those games before, questions were asked over whether he and Bruno Guimaraes were too similar to work together as a partnership.
When he returned after his ban, that question didn't go away for a few weeks, but suddenly, things started to click, and Tonali has since become one of Newcastle's best players.
Sandro Tonali says the intensity of the Premier League took some getting used to
Ignoring the ban, Sandro Tonali says there were other factors that held him back when he first joined Newcastle, namely the intensity of the Premier League and Eddie Howe's style of play.
Speaking to Premier League Productions' YouTube channel, Tonali says that he could only manage an hour at full tilt when he first joined, but he has been working hard on his conditioning and now he can go for 100 minutes.
"I think in the first four or five games, the intensity was the worst for me because it was totally different.
"When I started to play here in England, I played the first 10 games with high intensity for 60 minutes, after 60 minutes I was a little bit slow, and everything was a bit down. I'm training a lot to play 90 minutes at 100%, and now I can play 100 minutes at 100%."
We've seen some impressive athleticism from Sandro Tonali
We can see how much that has paid off by the number of times we've seen Tonali perform a gut-busting run and full pace in the 88th minute.
His fitness is absolutely off the charts, and it's a huge reason why he's become such a huge player for Newcastle.
It all just underlines how important it is to keep Tonali happy and keep him at Newcastle.
