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Manchester Evening News
Manchester Evening News
Sport
Samuel Luckhurst

Erik ten Hag's assistant Mitchell van der Gaag brings back fond memories for Manchester United staff

Erik ten Hag's assistant, Mitchell van der Gaag, has impressed during the open training sessions during Manchester United's pre-season tour and, for Darren Fletcher, Van der Gaag brought back memories of his childhood in Scotland.

Van der Gaag spent two years with Motherwell and graced the Scottish Premiership Panini album a couple of times.

Fletcher vividly remembers Van der Gaag's flowing locks back when overseas players were a novelty in the Scottish game and the technical director asked fellow Scot and United analyst Paul Brand to dig out an image of their new colleague.

Also read: Our interview with De Gea on his future and Ten Hag

Even though Van der Gaag's Panini image comes up on Google, Brand asked his mother to dust off his album and send him an image.

United are flying straight back to Manchester after their final friendly in Australia against Aston Villa and Ten Hag has given the players Monday off.

They are due back in on Tuesday and fly to Oslo for their penultimate friendly against Atletico Madrid late on Friday and United will leave straight after the Saturday lunchtime fixture ahead of their final friendly against Rayo Vallecano at Old Trafford on Sunday.

Ten Hag has granted the players little downtime but the majority of the squad visited Perth Zoo on the final leg of their tour.

A second visit to the vast Optus Stadium in Perth has provided United with another reconnaissance as they mull over plans to enhance their own stadium.

The Optus Stadium was opened in 2018 and only 18 months old when it first hosted United for their friendly wins over Perth Glory and Leeds United in July 2019. Like most modern stadia, it is oval-shaped and one of the main issues with the dated Old Trafford is it is rectangular, which affects the acoustics.

Although the Optus Stadium looks huge, it holds a maximum of 65,000 - 11,000 fewer than Old Trafford.

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