Ibrahima Konate has been given a solid piece of advice on his first week as a Liverpool player.
The Reds' £35million summer signing has joined up with his new teammates for pre-season training at the club's camp in Salzburg, Austria.
Liverpool went to the same facility last summer and have now begun their intensive preparations for the new campaign.
Centre-back Konate is in for a real stomach-churning introduction, as Liverpool's pre-season tests - including the dreaded lactate test - are renowned for being particularly brutal in order to cope with the demands of Jurgen Klopp's high-pressing style.
And Klopp's No.2 has issued the new boy with a clear and simple instruction which should stand him in good stead for the duration of his time at Anfield.
Writing in his pre-season diary for the Liverpool website, Pep Lijnders explained how the focus of their camp is initially all about "creating habits and showing our standards".
Few players do that quite as well as the oldest star in Liverpool's senior ranks, with Lijnders adding: "We say a big welcome to Ibrahima Konate: just listen to James Milner and everything will be fine!"
Milner has developed a reputation as being one of the fittest members of Klopp's squad, regularly topping the charts with regards to the test results when reporting back for duty.
Ever the professional, the 35-year-old has been working hard to maintain his fitness levels throughout the summer break, posting some impressive lap times - getting quicker with each one - which showed he had ran a total of 8.5kilometres in just over 34 minutes.
It's clear what he was preparing himself for, as the lactate test requires players to run a lap within a specified time, with that time then decreasing with each lap.
A rude awakening for Konate no doubt, but Lijnders was keen to point out it would not be all about putting the players through the hard yards.
He explained how Liverpool's camp had three stages.
"The first one is going back to basics with the idea that we want to control games by being dominant in each moment," he said. "Secondly, it’s going back to consistency and, thirdly, it’s about creating an us vs the world mentality.
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"No distraction, focus on the process and the collective. Something that will only work when we have the whole team together. This should make that wherever we go and whoever we play against, we will be able to put our game into place."
Helping Liverpool's cause is having defensive trio Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez and Joel Matip back from their respective injuries, as Konate prepares to challenge them for their places.
The view from inside the club is certainly that he has the ability to do so, as Lijnders' fellow assistant manager Peter Krawietz detailed earlier this month.
“In him we see the absolute potential to develop into a world-class centre-half. That’s of course what we want,” Krawietz told Liverpoolfc.com . “He is a young player still, but also experienced."
"His qualities are pretty obvious. He is a smart centre-half and in terms of defending, of course he has the physical body to be a proper centre-half.
"In England we all know what the things are they need to bring to the team: they need to be tall, they need to be quick, they need to be strong in the air and of course it’s important always for us as well that they fit in our tactical profile. In him, we see all of these qualities."
Liverpool kick-off their pre-season on July 20, in a short, double-headed friendly against Wacker Innsbruck and VfB Stuttgart.
