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Liverpool appointed Ryland Morgans as their new head of fitness and conditioning in October 2012.

The Welshman was previously at Swansea City, where he was the head of fitness and science.

Morgans has doubled as the head of fitness and science with the Wales national side under both Gary Speed and Chris Coleman.

He joined Swansea in August 2010, leaving Fulham to link up with his hometown team. Nottingham Forest and Northampton Town are also among his former clubs.

Ryland has gained BSc (Hons), Msc and PhD at Cardiff Metropolitan University in science and football and has also held the UEFA Pro Coaching License since 2010.

His main role at Liverpool is to ensure players are physically conditioned to deal with the demands of Premier League football and are able to recover quickly between matches. This is supported by periodised and individual strength and power programmes and nutritional interventions. This all starts with his meticulous planning for a new season well in advance.

Morgans explains: "We start putting plans together in early March, so by the end of last season our plans in terms of content, progressions and loadings were all pretty much done.

"Getting the players back in for their first week is about adapting them back into training after being off for six weeks. Once that's happened, it's about building up the amount of high-intensity and volume of work they can complete.

"As pre-season training progresses, the volume and intensity of key physical variables that we monitor during training will get increased. As pre-season progresses, the volume will drop slightly in order to allow us to develop the intensity of the training."

Morgans makes use of technology to ensure the fitness of the players is as closely monitored as scientifically possible.

The data is then fed back to Jürgen Klopp and his backroom team, where individual training programmes for the squad are drawn up and modified.

"We look at the distances the players cover and the speeds at which they cover those distances, as well as several variables that monitor accelerations, decelerations, twisting and turning which will allow us to then determine how hard training has been for each individual," said Morgans.

"We'll then feed that back to the coaches and the manager after pretty much every session and, therefore, if any player needs any modifications, it's based around some of the training data and medical information as well."

One aspect of Liverpool's pre-season training in 2013 that was highlighted by the squad was the use of footballs to help get the players fit.

Long gone are the days of running laps around Melwood.

"The footballs are out on the very first day," said Morgans. "There's a physical emphasis to all of our training - all the way through the season not just in pre-season - but there is a larger percentage of conditioning-type work through the pre-season period."

Steven Gerrard was one high-profile member of the first-team squad eager to praise Morgans' influence on pre-season training in the summer of 2013, stating: "He's a really good fitness coach who gets as much as he can out of the lads but does it in the right way."

The skipper went on to describe the Welshman's training regime as 'brutal'.