“We speak a lot. He’s very vocal and that helps. It helps me and everyone in the backline. I think his presence is very good as well,” he said.

“He has a lot of qualities on the ball that help us playing. We’ve worked on [our relationship] the whole pre-season and we’ll keep practising. There’s still a lot to do.

“It’s just one game. We had a good pre-season with good results and games where we’ve played very well.

“But we can do a lot better and it’s just the start. I think the key is we need to be very consistent and do it every game.”