Yves Bissouma believes hard work in training and during the lockdown has helped him find another gear.
The midfielder celebrated his 24th birthday on Sunday, having finished last season with a flourish when he scored his first goal for the club in the 2-1 win over Burnley on the final day of the campaign after some eye-catching displays during Project Restart.
He said, “I think I have improved a lot in the last six months. Before I maybe didn’t work as hard, but I began to understand that if you want to improve and play well in the Premier League you have got to work really hard in every training session.
“When lockdown began I didn’t stop working, I trained hard every day. When the season started again I was ready. In my head, if I train good today, I need to do more tomorrow.
“I train very hard, because the Premier League is very hard. If you don’t play well in this league then it is obvious. In my first season, sometimes I played well but sometimes I didn’t.”
The difference in intensity between Ligue 1, where Bissouma played for Lille before heading to England, and the Premier League also took some getting used to according to the Mali international, who believes its competitiveness makes the English top-tier one of the best competitions in the world.
He said, “It is so physical. You have to be able to go box-to-box and stay focused on what you want.
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“Every big player and big club are in this league. Every week you play it’s like a Champions League match because you play against a lot of teams who have been massively successful in Europe.
“The French league is so different. It’s not easy, but it doesn’t it have the same intensity and sometimes in France games can be slow. Here every game is so hard, you have to play your best for 90 minutes. But people have been saying recently ‘Biss played good’, which makes me happy.”