Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal has backed Luke Shaw to silence his critics and emerge as a star in his team this season.
Shaw struggled to make his mark in his first year at Old Trafford following a £27 million move from Southampton last summer, with injuries and ongoing fitness concerns restricting him to just 15 Premier League starts in 2014-15.
Having spent the summer working on his conditioning and impressing on the club's preseason tour of America, Shaw is fit and ready to make his mark at United. Van Gaal has offered him this glowing tribute that may well have been designed to bolster the 20-year-old's self-belief.
"I think that it shall be the season of Luke Shaw, that I believe," Van Gaal said to reporters in the United States. "I believe in him and he has to feel that, and I hope he shall show it.
"Luke Shaw is a big talent. He's very young so it's not so easy for him to come from Southampton to as big a club as Manchester United. He's only 20 years old. How many players of that age are playing in the Premier League?"
Those words were in stark contrast to the initial impressions made by Shaw on Van Gaal when he first arrived at United last summer.
It was during United's preseason tour of America a year ago that Van Gaal suggested Shaw was lacking the fitness he required to make an impression in his team as he said: "He needs to be fit and he is not very fit or fit enough to do what I want.
"He needs to train individually until he is fit. I cannot judge that, but I see what I see. I have spoken with him and we have made a programme for him."
Shaw swiftly agreed with the comments of his manager and will hope that the work he has put in over the course of the last 12 months, and especially in the summer break, will allow him to retain his fitness levels over the course of a full campaign of fixtures. That lengthy lise will include the addition of Champions League games if United come through their playoff tie next month.