Sean Maguire joined Off The Ball tonight as he starts his Preston North End career and he's keen to make an impact at his new club.
"You’ve no real time to think … you can’t take that extra one, two touches of the ball, you know somebody’s going to come in and smash you," he said, commenting on the intensity of training sessions.
He hopes to take any opportunity to impress his new manager and has been treating every training session like "his last."
"I can speak on behalf of every striker, they live and breathe on confidence" he reflected, saying that he doubted himself earlier in his career he's hit a rich vein of form and has already scored in pre-season for Preston.
The striker hopes to continue on from where he left off with Cork City. This isn't the first time he's crossed the Irish Sea - he signed a two and a half year deal with West Ham United as a teenager.
On that occasion, he failed to settle at the London club and struggled with homesickness.
"Maybe back then if I went back I might not have done that, obviously at that moment of time, it’s a Premier League club, they’re offering you a two and a half year deal, you have to go. I went over there, it was surreal. I was a Liverpool supporter, Joe Cole, Andy Carroll, I was in the dressing room with them all the time and training with them.
"It was a bit surreal, you know? You kind of took it for granted maybe - the first six months I could have worked harder and could have done a lot of things differently," he told Off The Ball - and offered a fascinating insight to what it feels like to be a young Irish player at a Premier League club.
Ultimately be believes his spell with Cork City transformed his career:
"I walked into the Cork City training ground as a boy and walked back out as a man" he told OTB.
Here's the full interview:
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