Bradford City striker Jake Young's rehab at St George's Park

The striker has recently returned from a two-week spell at the National Football Centre where he continued to up his recovery from the hamstring injury that wrecked his Bantams return last season.

And Graham Alexander cannot wait to see him line up with the rest of the squad as pre-season kicks off at Apperley Bridge today.

The City boss said: “Jake spent two weeks at St George’s Park to break up the rehab and he was in good shape there.

“It was basically physical work and rehab stuff at a high level.

“He hit a new max speed, which is great. You don’t do that if you’re not in some sort of good condition.

“I just think his endurance-based stuff would have been lacking from obviously not being able to train for the last four or five months.

“But I’ve been assured he’s ready to start training with us when we get back in.”

City rejected three January bids for Young after recalling him from a loan spell at Swindon where he scored 16 goals.

But Young started just two games and made three sub appearances before suffering an injury against MK Dons that needed an operation, ruling him out for the final three months of the campaign.

Now though, the 22-year-old is on course to be fully involved in the gruelling build-up to City’s curtain-raiser on August 10.

It is a major boost for Alexander, who is also excited to welcome back Alex Pattison after another long-term absence.

“With any player that’s been out for a certain amount of time, it’s about the confidence being rebuilt,” he added. “That’s the biggest thing with these muscle injuries.

“It’s good for a player to come back at this stage because there’s no mad pressure about a game being in three days’ time. We can ascertain exactly where they are.

“We’ll have to keep a careful eye on a few of those boys coming back in after missing a significant chunk of football.

“But I think they are all ready to start their pre-season programme at the same time as everybody else.

“For me, that’s a great place to be.

Alex Pattison is also fit to start pre-season training today (Image: Tom Pearson)

“We’ll assess how they get on each day but I think it’s important that they try to complete a full pre-season. You don’t get a second chance to do it.

“You can control the amount of work they are doing for any given day, whereas it’s just max out when it’s a game scenario.

“But now you can focus on their output and control it.

“You can cut their sessions short, which I don’t particularly like to do, but we’ve learned over the years to look after players as well as maintaining the intensity in the time they are on the training pitch.

“It’s still got to be at full pelt. What we can’t do is have a player training at half-level and then have his session cut short.

“We need the intensity and the levels to be really high but we’ll protect them with the amount that they do.”