Brentford’s walking wounded from last season have been putting in the extra hours in pre-season in order to hit the ground running next term.
The Bees squad reported back for duty last week as they underwent two days of testing at the GSK Human Performance Lab before heading for the pitches at Jersey Road.
Dean Smith’s side will be trotting out for their opening friendly fixture on Friday night at Boreham Wood as they prepare for the new Championship campaign.
They will be hoping for better luck on the injury front in 2016/17 as the Griffin Park treatment room became a busy place for large parts of last season.
The likes of Lewis Macleod and Andreas Bjelland barely kicked a ball while Scott Hogan only exploded onto the scene at the back-end of term.
However, they have been taking it upon themselves to work their way back to full fitness and are already among the top performers on the training field this summer.
“We have about six or seven players who came in early last week because they had missed a lot of time last season because of injury,” Smith told the club’s website.
“People like Philipp Hofmann, Lewis Macleod, Scott Hogan, and Andreas Bjelland really excelled last week and they are probably a bit ahead of the others in terms of their ball work.
“It is great to be on the green stuff. It is the first thing that you want to do. I have been twiddling my thumbs while they have been doing their lab testing. Everybody has come in fit and well.
“They had targets to meet and they met them. They had programmes to follow and, based on the hour they had on the training ground with me on Friday, they had followed them which is really pleasing.”
Brentford are working their way towards the season opener on August 6 against Huddersfield Town.
