Getting on a bit

Wandering around Holborn this lunchtime I found myself in Waterstone’s and browsing the entire shop. I will be 36 tomorrow and had decided to treat myself to something.

Trouble was I didn’t know what. Looking over the fiction shelves was merely a reminder of how many books I already have but have not yet read. I could imagine the devil on my shoulder cackling down: “what, you think you’re going to live forever or something? You’ll never read what you’ve already got, and now you want more? Sheesh.” And in the end that devil won out.

We read fiction to both reinforce and extend our world view, I think. We are of a certain mindset, more or less, and look for authors who speak to that mindset, then give us something we haven’t already considered. Or put another way, we take their work and put ourselves into it.

So when I read Jim Dodge’s fantastic “Not Fade Away” again I know that I’m dealing with a writer who shares a lot of my own values, telling a story that I am going to enjoy listening to in a way I wouldn’t if it were written by someone I don’t like or agree with.  Philip Roth taps into my, ahem, hidden male and sees the world through that particular lense: it’s not me in those stories, but he’s taking a part of me and putting it into another universe, and it’s interesting to see how this plays out (in real life – if you’re in any way reasonable – you can’t do some of the things Roth’s characters do, but it’s a good window into what it might be like to try). John Updike’s Rabbit books are an excruciating portrait of a narcissistic twerp, but luckily for me I read them at my most narcissisticly twerpish phase and realised that it perhaps wasn’t just me who had it in him to be like this, gave myself a break and ended up back on a path that leads me to where things are now. John Updike really did change my life. Edward Abbey’s characters have similar beliefs to me, but while I think it’s a shame about the environment, they destroy building sites and blow up dams to make their point more forcefully. Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe is so well written as to again make me feel I could be him. So I read Marlowe and thrill to his ups and downs. It’s true: I wish I were him.

Reading – if you choose the right books – does this. There is a eurotrance band called Oceanlab who have a song that contains the line “and it feels like me, on a good day” (a phrase since copied/borrowed by a company selling anti-flatulence tablets, I think), and that’s about it, taking the character traits you value in yourself and stretching them into another character and another situation and playing the whole thing out expertly.  It reassures and excites, and is why I continue to read and continue to buy books, even when the shelves are already double-stacked.

So 36, which finally feels like middle age. (I’m also reading Marcus Berkmann’s excellent “A shed of one’s own”, on this very subject).  We have a son, a nice son so far, and we’re pleased about that. I have an alrightish job, I cycle to work a couple of times a week (and therefore get the exercise that keeps me sane) and I’m still able to watch Fulham with reasonable frequency.

(Football is odd, in that it’s at once far less important (it doesn’t really matter what happens) and just as all-consuming as it has been. It’s very hard to put yourself in the shoes of a modern footballer like you might a character in your favourite books, so that side of things is tricky.  I do think this explains Roy Hodgson’s appeal – Roy had a lot going for him that I admired and wanted to take in, too – and perhaps Martin Jol’s wishy-washy place in our affections: who is this man?)

So I dunno. Part of becoming what you are (as Juliana Hatfield questioned way back in the 90s) is acceptance and a gradual reversion to what you’ve always been and wanted to be all along.  So you start off well when you’re young, do things that are fun and interesting, gradually get bent out of shape by the big mean world for 20 years or so, then go about trying to bend yourself back into the original you (Scott Fitzgerald talked about the same thing in the Great Gatsby, although there was a big difference: his characters didn’t want to get back to what they were; they were desperate to be something else).  I think that at 36 the unbending is going quite well, all things considered, and again, this is where the fiction comes in. As you go through this unbending you are guided by the voices of older, wiser people (here, authors), people who can see the human condition for what it is and who can steer you along the road you want to travel down.

Or as DJ Shadow put it on Lost and Found:

 
Get high get above yourself
Look down upon yourself
Until you’re inside o’ yourself
Look to the front or the back o’ yourself
 
To the back or front of yourself
It’s inside yourself
And then you see your own head
And know yourself is yourself
 
’cause when you find yourself
You’re gonna find that yourself
Is only yourself
And the self that can only be yourself
 
So when you’re in front of the back of yourself
You’re gonna find that your mind
Is in the center of yourself
And god is nothing but yourself
 
And when you reach for yourself
You’ll know that yourself
Is the only thing that can happen to yourself
So that nothing can put you down

Indeed.  In the end I didn’t buy a book. I held Ronald Reng’s Robert Enke biography in my hand for a long time but ultimately put it back. Another day.

Premier League Reading Stars 2012

The Premier League Reading Stars list of 2012 is out.  The idea is that footballers might encourage kids and grown-ups to read by ‘backing books’ in public. 

My friend Matthew and I tried to get a grant for a similar scheme a few years ago, possibly using Sir Roy as a figurehead, but we were turned down (for reasons that were probably very unfair) and “Roy’s Reads” never did make it.  However, here we are, and here’s what we’re reading:

Theo Walcott (Arsenal)
Children’s book: TJ and the Hat-trick by Theo Walcott
Adults’ book: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling

Comment: Pah! Theo plugs his own book and then possibly the least original suggestion for an adult book imagineable. Not a great start to our list.

Barry Bannan (Aston Villa)
Children’s book: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Adults’ book: David Beckham: my side by David Beckham

Comment: Barry starts well with some Roald Dahl – fine idea – but lets himself down with the Beckham. He’d have been better off putting another Roald Dahl up there.

Ryan Nelsen (Blackburn Rovers)
Children’s book: Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck! by Kyle Mewburn
Adults’ book: The Marks of Cain by Tom Know

Comment: Fair play to Nelson – haven’t heard of either of these.  The blurb for the Marks of Cain goes:

The gripping new high-concept thriller from the author of The Genesis Secret, perfect for fans of Dan Brown and Sam Bourne.

In America a young man inherits a million dollars, from a grandfather he thought was poor. Meanwhile, across Europe old men and women are being killed, in the most barbaric and elaborate of ways. And a brilliant scientist has disappeared from his laboratory in London, taking his extraordinary experiments with him.

Tying these strange events together is an ancient Biblical curse, a medieval French tribe of pariahs, and a momentous and terrible revelation: something that will alter the world forever. One couple is intent on discovering this darkest of secrets, others will kill, and kill again, to stop them.

Shifting from the forgotten churches of the Pyrenees, to the mysterious castles of the SS, to the arid and frightening wastes of Namibia, Tom Knox weaves together astonishing truths from ancient scripture and contemporary science to create an unputdownable thriller.

Oh.

Stuart Holden (Bolton Wanderers)
Children’s book: The Twits by Roald Dahl
Adults’ book: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Comment: Again, high marks for the Twits – another fine book – but the Alchemist is… well a bit… what am I trying to say… oh I don’t know.

Josh McEachran (Chelsea)
Children’s book: Mr Messy by Roger Hargreaves
Adults’ book: El Diego by Diego Maradona

Comment: Josh keeps it simple with a Mr Men book (clever, in that it’ll lead the reader onto others in the series), then suggests we read up on Diego Maradona. I don’t know about that but perhaps it’s a half-interesting choice.  I haven’t read it, and would imagine that Jimmy Burns’ book is better, but again, nobody asked my opinion. It’s Josh’s choice.

Tim Cahill (Everton)
Children’s book: BFG by Roald Dahl
Adults’ book: The Smell of Football by Mick Rathbone

Comment: a pattern is emerging isn’t it?  BUT, Cahill has done what others haven’t and come up with something interesting sounding:

When Mick Rathbone signed for Birmingham City as a 16 year-old apprentice he was living every schoolboy’s dream. But when he discovered he was so nervous he was unable to speak, let alone pass the ball, in the presence of his boyhood hero and City star Trevor Francis he realised that a career in football might not be everything he had imagined. The Smell of Football is the brutally honest and utterly unputdownable story of how ‘Baz’ conquered his personal demons to build a life in the game – from the terrified teenager who purposely tried to get injured in training rather than get picked for the first team, to the experienced pro who became Head of Medicine at Premier League Everton FC in charge of the treatment of the likes of Wayne Rooney, Louis Saha and Tim Cahill. Brilliantly written and packed with hilarious tales featuring a football ‘who’s who’ cast of characters – from Sir Alf Ramsey and ‘Big Sam’ Allardyce to David Moyes, Duncan Ferguson and Rooney himself – The Smell of Football is an engrossing and moving memoir that covers every aspect of the professional game and gives an unprecedented insight into what life is really like at football’s coalface.

Sounds good.

Mark Schwarzer (Fulham)
Children’s book: Megs and the Vootball Kids by Neil Montagnana-Wallace and Mark Schwarzer
Adults’ book: Destined To Live by Ruth Greuner

Comment: Mark goes for one of his own (shameless!) then something about the holocaust. Goodness.

Charlie Adam (Liverpool)
Children’s book: Quack! Quack! by Roger Priddy
Adults’ book: May I have your attentions please? by James Corden

Comment: Oh for f*ck’s sake.

Owen Hargreaves (Manchester City)
Children’s book: The Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss
Adults’ book: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Comment: Expected more from Hargreaves.  Fine children’s choice, bland adult choice. Next.

Chris Smalling (Manchester United)
Children’s book: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling
Adults’ book: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Comment: Smalling expects more of his children: where Walcott made Harry Potter his adult choice, Chris believes this will work in the other category, too.  Dan Brown? Must try harder. If you’re going to select someone from your squad who’s a ‘reader’, why not get someone who reads?

Mike Williamson (Newcastle United)
Children’s book: Meg and Mog by Helen Nicoll
Adults’ book: Bob Wilson’s Ultimate Collection of Sporting Lingo by Bob Wilson

Comment: See above. Bob Wilson’s Ultimate Collection of Sporting Lingo?  What?

David Fox (Norwich City)
Children’s book: The Gruffalo’s Child by Julia Donaldson
Adults’ book: Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre

Comment: Ah, okay. This is interesting. Hats off to Fox for coming up with something interesting sounding, not about football and not completely obvious.  It’s between him and Cahill at this point, then.

Joey Barton (QPR)
Children’s book: The Witches by Roald Dahl
Adults’ book: Dracula by Bram Stoker

Comment: A canny choice, something that people will be able to identify with but perhaps haven’t read before. Roald Dahl is obvious but safe: fine books, silly man.

Carlo Nash (Stoke City)
Children’s book: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Adults’ book: Family Adventures in Style by Dr Jill Nash and Carlo Nash

Comment: Jesus wept…

John O’Shea (Sunderland)
Children’s book: Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl
Adults’ book: The Runaway Jury by John Grisham

Comment: alright, not my cup of tea but I imagine Grisham books are perfect for long away trips, etc. I can see this.

Leon Britton (Swansea City)
Children’s book: James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Adults’ book: An Idiot Abroad by Karl Pilkington

Comment: er. Okay. Fine.

Niko Kranjcar (Tottenham Hotspur)
Children’s book: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling
Adults’ book: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Comment: Good choices, nothing too ‘out there’ and while I had hoped Niko to come up with some interesting sounding book from his homeland, this is a fine (if obvious) recommendation.

Paul Scharner (West Bromwich Albion)
Children’s book: The Gruffalo’s Child/The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson
Adults’ book: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Comment: No wonder Roy has been after him for a while.  Dumas doesn’t seem enormously respected but I love his books (although I haven’t read this one).  Good choice, if a little intimidating (it is a massive, massive book).  In that sense, given the point of this exercise, he’s showing off a bit, isn’t he?

Chris Kirkland (Wigan Athletic)
Children’s book: Splat the Cat by Rob Scotton
Adults’ book: Thinking Outside the Box by Brad Friedel

Comment: righto.

Stephen Ward (Wolverhampton Wanderers)
Children’s book: The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson
Adults’ book: Digital Fortress by Dan Brown

Comment: And that’s that.

Well done Tim Cahill, Niko Krancjar and David Fox.  Otherwise, what have we learned?  Me, I’m going to dig out Paul Scharner’s Dumas, but then will probably put it straight back on the shelf.  One day…

What do you think?

Jordan Rhodes

This three part article on Jordan Rhodes is a must-read.

Doing nothing in January

Saturday’s win did many things but most of all it reminded us that, while the current Fulham squad does need a bit of tweaking, it contains a number of good players and making moves in January for the sake of making moves in January is probably not something we need to get too involved with.

Take the AJ situation.  For a long time I have been of the view that taking £2m for a player at this stage of his career and contract cycle would probably be a good thing. But my thinking overlooked the crucial fact that Johnson is a known quantity within the club, and while he may not be able to usefully start every week, there will be games where he can be very important indeed.  Had we shifted Johnson to Blackburn we’d have money in the bank but probably would not have managed that epic comeback.  Nobody else in the squad plays like he plays so we’d have had to find another plan B, and that Plan B would surely not have worked as well as Jol’s actual Plan B.  A hopeless defeat on the back of that Blackburn hopeless defeat could have been devastating to the team. 

Now I don’t know how many situations are AJ situations anymore, but his role in the team’s two biggest wins this season is surely something to ponder (there’s a challenge: what did these games have in common?).  So, based on all this, it seems unlikely that Jol will sell Johnson.  Jol’s said as much for some time but it’s always felt like managerspeak.  Johnson, I suspect, has played his way back into a Fulham future.

Ditto Zamora.  There was an interesting thing in the Guardian’s Secret Footballer column about how sometimes a new manager will deliberately make life difficult for a key player as a way to impose himself on his new squad: if I can do this to x, imagine what’ll happen to you if you step out of line, being the presumed thinking. From our lofty position as innocent bystanders we can’t really know what happens behind those Motspur Park hedges, but it’s not too great a leap to imagine that this is exactly what has been happening.  Zamora, though, has again proved himself to be a unique and valuable contributor.  Unless someone offers silly money for him it’s hard to see him leaving now, and the only team with money and desperation is QPR, and you can imagine how likely MAF is to sanction a sale to them at this point.

So where is the weakness we need to urgently fix?  Defence? Hardly.  Midfield?  Chris Baird has shown us again how useful he can be in there.  Up front we have Zamora and Johnson and Dempsey to deputise, so while it’d be nice to take a punt on a Rhodes or a Maynard, it seems unlikely that the deal would suit either the buying or the selling club at this moment in time – far better to take a considered view of things in the summer.

I don’t think we’ll do anything at all.

Clint Dempsey – lunchtime legend

If you’re eight or ten or twelve and your dad’s just recently started taking you to Craven Cottage, you’re probably loving life at the moment.

Most of us get into football because of the excitement of it, the hero worship, and the strange thrill of seeing a small round thing manipulated so expertly. We like to see players doing things we can only dream about, then we like to be part of the crowd celebrating these feats.

It doesn’t get much better than a Premier League hat-trick on a dark winter’s afternoon, leading your team back from the brink of disaster to a five goal walloping.

So if you’re eight or ten or twelve and you were there on Saturday there’s not much doubt about what you’re telling everyone about at school today, about who you’re pretending to be in the playground.

Played, Clint. That’s what it’s all about.

 

Fulham 5-2 Newcastle

Have you ever seen anything like it?

One of the worst first half performances in memory. Newcastle were very impressive, well drilled, pressurising perfectly, timing their confrontations and ganging up on our players relentlessly. We couldn’t keep the ball.  They could, spraying it around and running us ragged.  They scored just before half-time and rarely has a goal been so well deserved.

Steve Sidwell went off after 34 minutes.  It could have been an injury or a tactical switch.  He and Murphy rarely look the part together and the team simply wasn’t functioning.  But Jol’s shuffle was terrible: Bryan Ruiz, a fine player but one who does not thrive in busy areas, was placed in the middle of the pitch with Murphy.  If a manager’s job is to put his players in a position from where they can make the greatest contribution, Jol could not have got this more wrong.  Sure enough – and who could have seen this happening? – Ruiz was caught in possession by two Newcastle midfielders, the ball broke to Danny Guthrie and he smashed home from distance.

Ruiz was subbed at half-time, a shame because he had been sold down the river with Jol’s change.

However, good news was on the way.  The team was obviously missing Dickson Etuhu (again) but with him not in the squad the obvious move was to introduce Chris Baird, a player who hasn’t featured much but who has the happy knack of playing well and making those around him better.  All of a sudden Murphy looked like Murphy, knowing that he had a team player and capable side-kick in the engine room.

Instantly and perhaps fortunately we were back in the match, a long ball over the top setting Johnson free. He got into a contact situation and fell over, but it didn’t feel like a penalty (and if it was a penalty, why did nobody receive a punitive card?).  However, after some consideration Lee Mason pointed at the spot.  Danny Murphy did the rest and we had what felt like a horribly undeserved equaliser.

Then the game went mad.  Clint Dempsey scored another one of those goals that are easy but only if you’ve put yourself in the right place to make it easy, in this case following in after a great surge from Johnson and a nice bit of play by Zamora.  Krul saved but Dempsey used some part of his leg to bundle the ball home.

Then another, Dempsey free again after more good forward combination work, and a fine low finish past Krul.  Goodness.

At 3-1 Newcastle had to attack and the game opened right up. AJ and Zamora were having great fun now, and all the momentum was with Fulham.  AJ won a second penalty, again slightly fortunate perhaps in that he seemed to have lost control of the ball, but against that he might have been fouled at the start of his run.  Dempsey was on a hat-trick, Murphy had already scored a penalty, but this one was taken by Bobby Zamora.  Who knows why, but in any case, up he stepped and in it went.

Hatem Ben Arfa turned Riise inside out and buried a shot at Stockdale’s near post to make it 4-2, then Zamora (?) sent Dempsey racing clear again, and again he drove past Krul on the run, a second January hat-trick for the man who scores with his left, his right, and makes Drogba look shite (and indeed, at this point Dempsey may be the better player).

So what happened?

First, the penalty.  We had been so bad that we needed something to go our way to get back into the match.  The penalty was perfect in that sense.

But it was only possible because AJ was on the field. We were so static and hopeless without him that we could’ve played all day and got nowhere. Sometimes AJ’s running can look pointless and easy to handle, but today felt like a game where he could contribute. He did that, as fine a performance as he’s given in a Fulham shirt.

Of course the goals changed the game, and with each one that went in Newcastle seemed to get more and more open.  This played into our hands and we murdered them on the break.  This Fulham team seems to thrive with space, whether it’s against 10 men (Blackburn excepted) or when games open up, suddenly our attacking players come alive and show what they can do.  When space is hard to find we look clueless, but can be devastating when we get time and places to run into.

I was quite optimistic that Newcastle would tire. They defended so well as a team in the first half, and teams generally can’t keep that sort of thing up for ninety minutes (witness Real Madrid’s attempts to harry Barcelona lately: always goes well for half an hour then reverts to normal).  As they tired we got better.

The return to four-four-two. This felt a bit like player power (echoes of QPR when we went 4-4-2 with AJ and Zamora and scored six), but whatever happened, the team looked far more cohesive in its more familiar setup.

So yes, weird, wonderful, 5-2.  This one’ll take a bit of digesting, but what fun (in the end).

Morning

Saturday morning.  South London is grey and gloomy.

It’s always exciting to have a game after a bit of a break. Back into your regular seats to see the Whites playing against an intriguing looking Newcastle side.

In a way it’s a shame that Tiote and Ba will be absent – always nice to see the opposition’s best players close up.  Nevetheless, their absence should help us to get a result.

Anyway, looking forward to it. Catch you later.

Football psychology

You’ll like this.  The difference between success and failure in football can be minute – you need every edge you can get. And when you think about it, so much of football is in the mind. We talk about teams playing with confidence: that’s a mental state. We talk about players looking nervous, or not knowing what they’re supposed to be doing, or playing tentatively, or showing complacency.  All issues of the mind.  It’s a big, big deal, but one that football seems to have been slow to respond to.

Anyway, I’ve been reading football pyschologist Dan Abrahams‘ thoughts about the game on Twitter for quite a while, and found myself wishing he’d been around when I was young. It makes so much sense!

I asked Dan a few questions and  he was good enough to answer them below.

What impact can the crowd have on players, both positive and negative?

I’ve spoken with players about this and it appears by and large they do hear things chanted or shouted from the stands (especially during a break in play.) How it affects a player largely depends on his or her perception at the time which in turn is determined by several factors including personality, past experiences, hardiness, and coach and team support.
My strong advice to fans is to always support your team. The ‘dig a player out’ philosophy rarely works because the player isn’t receiving solutions to a specific problem. He’s just being chanted at about how poorly he’s playing. This is more likely to diminish his confidence, distract him from the game and subsequently affect his awareness, anticipation and movement.
Many fans who support Premiership or Championship clubs point to the enormous sums of money professional players make and that they should be entitled to vent their anger in the player’s direction. But this attitude ignores the fact that footballers’ have the same brain as everyone else. If the fan was chanted at in a negative way in his workplace I’m unsure the quality of his performance would improve.

It seems to me that football is a game of momentum. How can players change a game’s momentum?

I need a whole book to answer this one. From a football psychology perspective you must plan to deal with momentum before playing. Specifically preparing the strategies you are going to use to deal with momentum both for and against. Examples of cognitive strategies I’ve used with players include deliberately keeping focus in the present moment, positive and confident self-talk no matter what, and verbal cues related to sticking to role and responsibilities. Behavioural strategies include visual cues, deliberately playing with fun and freedom, maintaining positive body language and being more vocal.

Roy Hodgson seemed to be very good about not getting too up after a win, nor too down after a defeat. How easy is this to accomplish and what steps can teams take to stay on an even keel?

Footballers must remind themselves that they are competing and not supporting. It matters little what your job or discipline is, whether you are a trader, in the army, a sportsman or a surgeon, when you are performing the intellectual part of the brain must dominate and take control of the emotional part. Of course emotions play a significant role in high performance but they must be managed.

This is especially true post match when emotions can be high. Footballers can be particularly guilty of becoming slaves to emotions post match. Win and they are so high that they don’t find time to objectively analyse their game. Lose and they are so low that they don’t objectively analyse their game. As a football psychology consultant you try to help players remain even keeled by helping them manage their day to day focus. An underlying philosophy of maintaining emotional balance on a day to day basis is helping players become absorbed in the process of learning and improving rather than having an overwhelming focus on outcome. Essentially the winning should take care of itself.

These days we don’t seem to talk about players being in and out of form so much. Do you think there is such a thing as form, and if so, how much of this is mental and (therefore) how much is manageable?

The brain never switches off and is constantly connecting, re-connecting and reconfiguring meaning the human nervous system tends to be inconsistent. It’s impossible (and possibly unwanted) for us to think, feel and behave in the exact same ways everyday. Add to that the complexity of movement and the build up of small injuries, then form is a very real thing and is both a psychological and a physiological phenomenon. As a football psychology consultant you are always promoting the idea of building success seeking habits into a footballer’s day to day training and preparation. Doing the same great habits everyday gives a footballer a chance to manage his form and subsequently his game. On top of this a big part of my job is to help a footballer speak to himself in a confident, positive and adaptive manner everyday. To retain form he must manage how he speaks to himself pre and post training and while he’s resting. His thoughts mediate his feelings and subsequently his performances.

‘The zone’, in which a very deep concentration is achieved and a very pure instinct takes over.  The ball seems to be massive, the game is played in slow motion.  Do professional footballers routinely find themselves in ‘the zone’?  If not, can you work with them to get into this state?  (Is this even a good idea: do you need an aggression that does not necessarily fit with a relaxed state?)

I doubt many footballers find themselves ‘routinely’ in ‘the zone.’ From experience this tends to happen accidentally. To my mind the best chance an athlete has of slipping into ‘the zone’ is if he repeats the success seeking habits I talked about in the previous question. Executing these Monday to Friday then committing to a mental and physical pre-match routine on Saturday gives him a chance to high perform.
Relaxation is a quality associated with the zone but not to the detriment of physical output. An alert mindset and a relaxed body is probably the most appropriate way of putting it. A relaxed body can be congruent with a high physical output. I can have a relaxed body AND be first to the ball.

I know you’ve talked about forwards not being afraid to miss. The trouble is, this is how they’re judged.  How easy is it for forwards to think like this?

With great difficulty. But the more they put scoring on a pedestal the more stress they create. I say this to them all the time “You want to score..you have to score. But we know this. This is no **** Sherlock. That’s never going to change. But to give yourself the best chance of scoring you have to focus on the things you have to do to score.” Strikers have to stop worrying about scoring and start focusing on the skills that help them to score such as the runs they make, their movement, losing their marker, positioning, taking shots, quality strikes etc. Obsess about the process not about the outcome. That will take care of itself. It all comes down to the ability the person has to control their day to day focus. Do they focus on the misses they’ve had and the coach and team mates who constantly tell them he has to score? Or do they switch their focus onto the skills that will help them score 30 plus goals a season?

How do you work with players who are outside the team? Reserve goalkeepers can spend months without playing!  It must be very hard for them to feel that they’re not wasting their time.  

By helping them attain a mastery mindset. A mastery mindset is when an athlete is absorbed in improving his skills. This is his or her primary aim…to improve, to develop, to get better, to be the very best. Competing (and preparing to compete) happens as well but the performances take care of themselves. When a footballer becomes obsessed with improving he gives himself the best chance to have the best career he can possibly have. That might be Premiership football, it might be non league football…but it’s the best he can achieve.

Of all the sports populations I work with footballers are very guilty of being emotionally caught up in playing. You can’t blame them…its the culture of football, of playing matches every week. And playing in the team is out of their control. The idea of being unconcerned by playing and simply striving to improve everyday is largely alien to them…and requires enormous persuasion on my part a lot of the time.

For much more on football pychology and a free e-book on the subject, visit Dan’s website.

Dan’s also on Twitter @danabrahams77

[Pardon the Interruption]

Don’t normally get all political here (unless it involves public financing of private sporting ventures), but today some* of you may have noticed the black bar over Google’s logo today. Or Wikipedia going ‘dark’.

That’s because today is an U.S.-wide initiative to oppose SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and its sister legislation, PIPA.  These are bills in the two chambers of the United States Congrees would allow our fine and fair government and the conglomerates that support them to censor whatever content they deemed ‘pirated’ by an extremely vague set of rules, without any due process. (Hmm, sort of like the Patriot Act…)

Anywho, I won’t go into the process as others can explain it better than I can. What I do know is that there is a potential for this site to be blocked for any stateside fan. Which would be awful news for everyone. So read more here:

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CongressLookup

http://theoatmeal.com/sopa

http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html

But, please, take a minute to learn about it and write a quick email to the Representative of (your extremely gerrymandered) district or the Senator of your (planned, to an extent) State.

Right, as you were…

*I’m not sure if you Brits can see this as I’m unsure what the international ramifications are for this bill, i.e., what will happen to a foreign-based website viewed in that native nation. Just what will happen when we, in the U.S., try to view a foreign website.

Sometimes, Shit Happens

As much as I still cannot conceive the fact we conceded three goals to a team down a man for 7000 minutes, turns out the same happened to St. Mirren on the weekend!

But they conceded five!

Here’s the scoring sheet:

Hearts	5-2	St Mirren
Zaliukas 1 Skacel 23 Skacel 64 Skacel 68 Sutton 90		McGowan (pen) 13 Thompson 19

So, yes, Saturday sucked for us. A lot. But wow it could have been worse.

In “transfer” news, Marcelo Trotta’s loan deal at Wycombe expired. Marcelo scored eight goals in eight matches for the club, including a brace this past weekend. In his eight matches with the club, Wycombe scored 13 goals total.

So, he accounted for 61% of their entire offensive output alone. Yikes.

With and without the ball

We sometimes have a look at shooting and scoring stats here, but one thing we rarely do is factor in actual possession of the ball.

If we look at things on a per game basis we’re missing half the story.  If I tell you that Fulham are averaging 2 goals scored a game you’re impressed; if I tell you they’re averaging 2 goals a game despite only having the ball for 10 minutes out of the 90 you’re even more impressed (or are you? In any case, it doesn’t matter because the numbers are made up. But it’s more texture isn’t it?)

Let’s just get on with it.

The following shows how each team ranks in terms of:

• how many minutes of possession between shots taken
• how many minutes of possession in between shots on target
• how many minutes of possession in betwen goals

It also shows the same thing in reverse:

• how many minutes out of possession between shots allowed
• how many minutes out of possession between shots on target allowed
• how many minutes out of posssession between goals conceded.

As befits our new, exciting approach to graphics, I have colour coded the results. Green means one of the best five teams in the league, red means one of the worst five.

What can we see?

• Despite what I had expected, Fulham are actually quite efficient attacking, but porous in defence.  This isn’t what I thought I’d seen with my eyes, but makes sense when we figure that we’re been playing five attacking players on occasion this season, at least three of whom don’t really defend.  We’re relatively very effective at creating shooting chances, and relatively ineffective at stopping them.  That our F/A totals are about where they normally are suggests that our defence and goalkeeper have been doing surprisingly well and our attack hasn’t been as efficient as it should be, which does correlate with what we’ve seen with our eyes.
• Blackburn’s figures again emphasise the Yakubu (terrific)/Robinson (poor) effect. They are scoring more often than almost everyone per minute of possession, but conceding more frequently than almost everyone, too, despite fairly ‘normal’ shots for and against numbers.
• Man City are best at scoring and not conceding, at least in possession terms. Impressive.
• Villa seem to have their balance all wrong. They are effective at stopping the opposition from shooting but not at transitioning into counter-attacking opportunities.
• Stoke seem to be in the same boat, although probably in different ways.
• Spurs take less time in possession than anyone between shots.  This fits with their super-quick attacking play I guess.
• Wolves seem bad at stopping shots and at creating them. Oh dear.
• Swansea’s numbers may be misleading because they keep the ball so well.
• Everton are fantastic at stopping opponents from shooting (see raw data).

Again, this is all based on time in possessionl.  When I’ve done this before it’s been per 90 minutes, but for this I’ve taken the average possession per game and used that instead, so if City have the ball 60 minutes and therefore don’t have it 30 minutes we use these two numbers for their calculations.  I appreciate that the ball isn’t in play for 90 minutes but it’s a fair assumption to make, I think.

Possession data from whoscored.com.

Here’s the raw data in minutes:

And another thing

Just seen this on Twitter:

Paul Robinson (12) has conceded 4 more goals from outside the box this season than any other keeper in the league (Wayne Hennessey – 8)

I have been banging on about Paul Robinson not being a good goalkeeper for years now. He is very good at the reflex stuff that look good on TV, but consistently posts saves/shots ratios that are worse than most other goalkeepers, mainly because he seems hugely vulnerable to shots from a bit further out. He did this at Spurs, so it’s not just a Blackburn thing.

This is one of football’s little mysteries: the shots look so good that the assumption is always that the keeper could do nothing with them. But good goalkeepers can make adjustments so that by the time the shot gets to them they save it. Their important work happens before we’re even looking at them.

Not a new thought (here, anyway), so I’ll pass on.

But the main point is that Fulham almost never do well against Paul Robinson, and almost never test him with efforts from distance. Grrrrr.

 

 

Pace and width

Following on from yesterday’s post about space, watch this a few times (Messi scoring last night against Real Betis).

The Betis defence is mainly on the far side of the pitch. Barcelona – who habitually station a man very wide on either flank – move the ball quickly to the other side, stretching the play and making the pitch big. Their passing is quick, the defence can’t settle, they score.  So, so simple. If it were that simple everyone would do it, of course, but this attack is everything that Fulham are often not at the moment (and Jol talks about it quite a lot in post match interviews so he knows it, too).

 

Making space to play in

I exaggerate to make a point, of course, but the game yesterday seemed to sum up ‘bad Fulham’ under Martin Jol. When we get it right, we’re excellent. When we don’t we’re extremely frustrating. This is shown in the second diagram, illustrating our habit of trying to walk the ball through massed defences (who have funneled us accordingly, knowing that we can’t hurt them wide).

Again, I exaggerate – of course we use the width sometimes – but if we are to continue to invert our wide players we need more overlapping from the full-backs.  And when Blackburn went down to 10 men we could have been much, much, much more aggressive in using the flanks (especially as Chris Samba was out, ensuring the heart of the Rovers defence would’ve been even more vulnerable to crosses).  We don’t even have to get to the byline: that area on the edge of the box and level with the penalty spot seems to be quite dangerous these days. But we keep cutting infield and trying to thread a needle through a haystack.

Again: in attack you try to make the pitch big; in defence you try to make it small.  We’re struggling to make space when we attack.

Blackburn 3-1 Fulham

Oh dear.

Yakubu sent off in the first half, Samba missing. What more could we ask for?

Made a right horlicks of this one. Blackburn are a half-decent side in the middle of a horrible season but we’re good enough to win in these circumstances.  Should have done, comfortably.

Blackburn scored the first with a Pedersen free-kick just on half-time, then the second from Dunn just after the break.  Those two moments defined the game, and while we dominated possession, Paul Robinson really didn’t have enough to do.

For the millionth time, attacking football is about creating space, and when playing a team with ten men who are packing their defences in you need to do everything you can to make space.  That doesn’t mean doing what we always seem to do, work the ball through the crowded bit of the pitch and hope that something happens, because it won’t more often than not.  With only Blackburn forward Fulham should have been more decisive sooner, withdrawing one of the full-backs (Riise eventually made way) and stationing two players wide.  We had some width but the wrong-sided attackers kept cutting in towards the massed defence and getting nowhere. Where were the crosses exploiting Samba’s absence?  No combination play on the flanks either: we kept doing the wrong thing over and over, like the drunkard bashing on  the door of the wrong (empty) house all night wondering why it wouldn’t open.  Width, space, pace.  Bah.

We got one back when Damian Duff scored with a right footed shot across Robinson, but then allowed another on the break and despite subbing the sub (Frei) with five minutes left (needless humiliation of a young player) still couldn’t find a way through.

Really disappointing.

Bad moon rising

Not here: the moon looks fine and still. No, today has been a good day for hearing Creedence (twice, in fact) so here, it being Friday, is some music.  And here, it being me, is Juliana Hatfield, singing some Creedence.  Everyone’s a winner!

Lucky 8

Interestingish article here on the Portland Timbers website. (yes, this is Rich, but I like American things, too).

So while recent history suggests the Number 8 [pick in the MLS draft] has produced some promising young players, perhaps the most famous MLS Number 8’s of all time was the New England Revolution’s Number 8 selection in 2004: Clint Dempsey.

Dempsey won Rookie of the Year in 2004, played in back-to-back MLS Cup Finals in 2005 and 2006, and then proceeded to Fulham of the English Premier League where he has become a Craven Cottage legend with 39 goals and counting in 167 matches. The US international and World Cup veteran is considered one of the finest American soccer players in the world.

Here’s that first round:

Ah, Freddy Adu…

Anyway, there we are.  Clint was the eigth selection.

(also, 2004? Yikes.  How quickly things change, eh?)

Uniform Aesthetics. And Our Third Kit.

[Disclaimer: I’m not a graphic designer, so pardon the terrible syntax and inaccurate jargon in the following post. And just refer to Paul Lukas’ Uni Watch for all uniform related interest.]

I got the third kit in the mail last week. Its long sleeve, gold, collared, and a gem.

But the best part about it is the Johnny Haynes “jacquard” print on the lower right torso. Sublime.

And it got me wondering: why don’t we see similar graphics on footy kits? Even if it’s the third kit with bizarre colors so it won’t offend the die-hards, why not get a little creative?

As some of you may know, I play Ultimate Frisbee. It’s probably one of my favorite sports for a whole myriad of reasons. But what I love most about the sport is the creativity in design teams (club, college, et al) have in their uniforms. Here’s a quick sampling of photos from club regionals, via usaultimate and ultiphotos.com. It may seem like a select sampling, but notice they don’t have the logo/text/etc on their chest. Instead it’s on their torso, back, or, well, everywhere.

But, after some searching for footy similarities, I found that only a couple of clubs, Marseille and their awesome designs aside, incorporate design elements (stripes aside; more on that later) into their kits. Marseille seemingly do it every year, whereas Juventus and Union Berlin tried it for this season with great results:

Personally, I think they look amazing (okay, the color of the Juve kit is suspect. But the idea is wonderful). I might even go buy the Union Berlin kit right now.

It’s the same if you look at other major sports. The logo/text/etc is almost exclusively on the chest. I don’t know if there is some edict from each specific league (very well could be), or just the uniform designers being conservative (University of Maryland Football aside). The only design elements that appear on a players torso are either stripes or solid colors.

Sometimes teams decide to rock the boat and get a bit more creative than the bland, narrow horizontal bar(s), but still don’t go “all-out” per se.

So why are uniforms so, well, predictable? If you Google “worst football kits” you can probably see why so many clubs are scared into doing something out-of-the ordinary. And for good reason; the Hull and Norwich kits from the early 90s look like a designer discovered the pattern function in the old MS Paint and thought it would make a good background color.

But then there are kits that are listed but shouldn’t be: the away Liverpool from ’94-‘96 and Manchester United from ’92-93. I’ll agree that they’re not executed well, but they incorporate the club’s crest in a unique way.

I get that Johnny Haynes probably won’t feature on the clubs actual third kit when they play, well, shit…they probably won’t be using it for the rest of the season huh? Oh well.

(How does the kit look after all? Oh right, here ya go…)

CCN GRAPHIC TURBO SHAZAM

Figure 1.0: Adding value to the club you manage

Mark Hughes, QPR and the “a” word

The thing with Mark Hughes is that we don’t really know why he left Fulham. There were various comments after the event mentioning a lack of ambition, which loosely translated seemed to mean “Fulham wouldn’t pony up £15m for Pablo Osvaldo”.  Hughes had a ‘get out’ day in his contract and (out of nowhere, it seemed) used that clause to escape SW6. Presumably he thought he’d get the Aston Villa job, but (somewhat inexplicably) that went to Alex McLeish instead.

So while it’s fun to have a dig at Hughes I suspect in the cold light of day he had his reasons and wasn’t helped by the identity of his agent (although nobody held a gun to his head and forced him to work with Joorabchian), whose presence has the effect of lending Hughes the vague odour of shiftiness that makes him both hard to warm to and even hard to trust.

Few Fulham fans warmed to Mark Hughes, but we did, I think, respect him. He had a toughness, a ‘big time’ feel about him that said that people weren’t going to mess about with. While he was at Fulham, Fulham were a serious team. We don’t know the degree to which the players took over and ran the team – that was another rumour – but outwardly Hughes’ time here didn’t do him any harm.

Until he left us. At which point he had a problem. Having spouted all this gumph about ambition it became clear that there were few avenues for this ambition to be realised. Villa looked elsewhere, so did Chelsea (he was hoping for that, too, right?). He’s not getting Man City again, United might have been on the radar in the distant future (and may still be if he can put together a fairly staggering run of success between now and whenever SAF calls it a day), but Liverpool, Everton, Spurs… then before you know it you’re among Fulham’s direct rivals. Ambition? Maybe, but not very well thought through.

QPR are in that awkward position of having unproven wealth. Their chairman has talked a good game but the league is littered with wealthy owners who haven’t quite realised how much money they’re expected to waste in the name of competing. This is presumably what Hughes and Joorabchian have been assessing, “give us £30m or we’re not interested” being the supposed demand.

Good luck to them. We might want Rangers to implode but who can say that the Premier League has been poorer for their presence? That 6-0 victory goes straight into the Fulham vaults as one of our great afternoons. We won’t be able to do that again if they’re relegated.

An ideal situation would see Hughes come in, do a decent job (but not too decent) and allow us to enjoy some proper derby football for years to come. QPR *and* Mark Hughes?  It’d be immense fun! Let’s hope it happens.