City travel to the Faroe Islands to face EB/Streymur in their season-opening UEFA Cup qualifier on 19th July after spending 10 days in Bavaria, where Hughes had honed the fitness of his Blackburn Rovers squad in previous years.

"It's been really good and I think everyone's enjoyed it," said Dunne, who signed a new four-year contract last week.

"What we've done, rather than the usual pre-season running, has been a lot of football-based fitness.

work hard

"It's probably harder than just running, but it's much more enjoyable and with us having the UEFA Cup in the next two weeks, it's important that we get our football fitness in early and get a feel for the football."

Assistant manager Mark Bowen, who followed Hughes from Blackburn last month, said the training regime should give City a competitive advantage over the opposition in the forthcoming season.

"We have come here to work hard, very hard," Bowen said. "The manager's philosophy is that you have to be able to run in order to win football matches in the Premier League. All the skill in the world is no use to you if you cannot match the opposition for pace and movement.

"We took great pride in the fact that the statistics showed that there was no fitter team in the Premier League than Blackburn and we aim to make sure that is the case with City."