Quote: airliebird,runninglate! "Jesus you're boring at times ..team sports is unexplainable at times. Strange things happen at times..so many variables make it hard to pinpoint..
Since you know everything explain to me how mini and a few others have gone from being key men to liabilities within 3 games after months/years of consistency. How pros can't hold simple passes when unchallenged...now before you go off on 1 about man management etc and this is the bit I really want you to explain to me is given the things I've highlighted which you may want to pin on coach and could explain..how do you tally that up if it's a mindset thing with that Defence. Cos that Defence was pretty unreal at times. And in RL nothing is more honest and a truer marker of mindset than defence.. particularly goal line D'"
Jesus you're so predictably boring! It's a discussion forum, the coach talks about mindset then won't acknowledge it's a massive part of what he does/or doesn't do that underpins that in the players.
Players confidence changes, so when under pressure to win (because we'd lost 5 in 7 before last night) of course things change, have you never watched athletes make more errors, compounding them after failures previously, it's rife in sport and in the workplace.
Teamsport has loads of variables as you say, however there are knowns about how humans behave in certain circumstances and why, even those whom are very good at what they do are not exempt.
Defence is easier, it's a much simpler task comparatively from a decision making/skill POV, it's also less about you as an individual most of the time at any given moment.
You make a tackle and the attacking player invariably is heading toward you, yes trying to evade of course but more often it's far more about brute strength not skill, tackling technique and understanding what is the best type of tackle has completely gone from the game apart from a few players like Houghton. You also have assistance more often than not, there's strength in those numbers mentally. When attacking, weighing up options, catching, passing etc it's all individual, ALL of the time, no-one is there to assist you, there's someone to pass to or to catch the ball from but in that moment it is you and you alone, THAT is when confidence, pressure/high levels of stress come into play.
The mindset of not thinking about failure but about what are the primary goals, say each set of 5 minutes how to complete the tasks you're doing, reset and whatever went before is gone and you crack on to achieve your goals in the next 5 or however long you set your targets for.
it's the mindset of players from the preparation BEFORE the games, during training and how one approaches these scenarios making it automatic that you do x and not Y so you reduce the chances of failure.
The going back to basics isn't the issue here, the players can catch and pass, the problems are not mechanical or not having the mechanical ability to do x, it's mental and how players address that during games especially when under duress, THAT is the coaches job to ensure that players are mentally prepared so they can avoid scenarios where they simply make unforced errors/poor decisions/fall back to default behaviour more so than times when they're not under pressure.
Does that explain it so you can understand?
