Get the day's biggest United stories delivered straight to your inbox Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

With Louis van Gaal's appointment at Old Trafford came the news that the Dutchman is bringing two coaches in with him - Marcel Bout and Frans Hoek.

Ryan Giggs has been confirmed as the number two but the future of the remaining coaching staff remains uncertain.

Of the two newcomers, Hoek has been with Van Gaal at all but one of the 62-year-old's previous teams and is currently working with him with the Netherlands.

In his career Hoek has worked with some of the world's best keepers, including Edwin van der Saar, Victor Valdes, and Pepe Reina.

M.E.N Sport takes a look at what the Reds can expect.

Philosophy

Van Gaal has been clear about the football he expects from his teams and Hoek has adapted that for his specialist position.

David de Gea was one of United's best performers last season and appeared to improve under Chris Woods. Woods could remain at the club but it is unlikely that Van Gaal will not draw on Hoek's expertise to some level in an area where he has served him so well at a number of clubs.

Speaking in a UEFA interview in 2012, Hoek outlined his ideas. "The vision will say 'what are the needs, the demands for the goalkeepers at this moment in the game.'" he said.

"It's always about what the game asks from the goalkeepers.

"All the clubs where I worked I made a profile out of the information I got out of the games, a profile of the ideal goakeeper for that club and when you have that profile - that's the base, that's the vision, that's the philosophy - you have to find a way, how can I work with this goalkeeper to the profile that is needed for this club."

Coaching

The nature of his previous jobs means Hoek has plenty of experience in managing keepers through domestic seasons and big European games, which the Reds will obviously be aiming to get back to.

But rather than isolate the keepers, the Dutchman believes in treating them as part of the team.

"My vision always has been we need to practise what we see in the game," he said. "So basically the game is the best practice ever.

"But it's 11 vs 11 - the amount of repetitions that they they'll face there is minimum.

"To improve that we have to create situation in which they get more situations to practice their strong or weak points. So the base is always the game, always, and the practice is as close as possible to that game.

"That means the pure individual goalkeeping coaching with the goalkeeping coach and the goalkeeper is getting less. It's more and more integrated in the team because, again, the goalkeeper is part of the team.

"He has to perform with them against other players so you need to prepare him for that."

With United's defence struggling at times last season with the number of different partnerships across the back line, getting the whole defence in sync could be the cornerstone to a successful season.

Youth

United were very keen to impress Van Gaal's strengths in working with youth, and indeed he does have a superb track record of bringing young players through.

Hoek has played a big part in that with young goalkeepers.

He lists the attributes needed in a young goalkeeper as being over 1.85m tall, ambition, discipline and being "extremely coachable", and says he always searches "for the first five passable first-team goalkeepers" when he comes to a club.

Explaining the importance of competition in driving keepers on, Hoek describes what made Victor Valdes and Pepe Reina "exceptional" when they were both 16-year-olds at Barcelona.

"For their age, they had like the perfect build physically," he said.

"The second thing is they were incredibly ambitious, they were actually pushing each other to a very high level and they were very willing to improve themselves so at the moment I saw them, first of all I didn't believe they were 16 years of age and secondly the way they were performing and presenting themselves - that was incredibly impressive."

That should give hope to youngsters Ben Amos, Sam Johnstone and - from 2015 - Vanja Milinkovic, who will all hope to develop under Hoek and push David De Gea.