IT took just a handful of pre-season training sessions for Claus Jensen to realise the fitness levels demanded in Denmark fell some way short of Wanderers' requirements. It's taken him a while longer to learn there's also a gulf in the standards of footballing discipline.

At Lyngby they were happy to accommodate and even encouraged his free spirit. But at the Reebok, as Colin Todd says: "There are no free roles".

"Discipline!" Jensen acknowledges, "that's a good word to describe it.

"It's a different game over here and I'm playing in a different position now. Here we have four in line in midfield but in Denmark I used to play just behind the front two.

"It's about having more discipline and less freedom. I knew it was going to take time and it's still taking time to develop. But I am feeling a lot happier in the position now."

He was certainly happy after netting his first league goal in Sunday's victory over Crystal Palace.

"It was a major relief to me," Jensen admitted after taking his season's total to three - his two earlier strikes coming in the Worthington Cup - with a goal that was taken so confidently, you wondered why it had taken so long for him to break into the Nationwide charts. "I think everybody could see that from my reaction. "It's not important who scores, it's whether the team wins that matters. But I've been used to scoring goals all my life and it was getting to me a bit."

Jensen was grateful to fellow countryman Per Frandsen for the touch of class that sent him clear of a Palace defence appealing for an offside flag that never came. But it still took some finishing and for a split second it seemed he had taken the ball too close to keeper Kevin Miller.

"It was a great ball from Per," said the youngest of the Danish trio, whose combination is reaping rich rewards for Wanderers, who are also seeing the best of Michael Johansen.

"He played it around two or three players and I was alone with the keeper. They tried for an offside and I just looked round to see if there was somebody after me and there wasn't. I had time to get round the keeper, which is what I prefer doing.

"I've tried shooting about 10 or 12 times this season and haven't been lucky so I decided not to shoot this time. I'm glad I didn't." Jensen wasn't the only one relieved to see his league 'duck' finally broken.

Having paid £1.6 million for a midfield player who was Lyngby's leading scorer last season - only his second as a professional - Todd is quite frank about his expectations of the fast-improving 21-year-old.

"Claus is a goalscorer and that goal will do him the world of good," the manager acknowledged. "He got a lot in Denmark and I honestly expect him to get more for us.

"He's been getting in the positions but it's one thing to get there and another to put the ball in the net. Hopefully, after this, he will go on and get more. But he's still learning.

"Over in Denmark he had that free role but there's no free role in English football . . . not for me anyway."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.