It would be too easy to get carried away with the positive vibes of eight matches unbeaten. Slaying the league favourites 4-0 felt like one of the best footballing days of my career. Not only because of the goals but the way we navigated ourselves through all of the pieces of learning from the previous months. It simply all came together. Seven days later and we beat bottom of the league in a rather flat and boring fashion. That said, it was a job done and another 3 points. The highs and lows of football are part of the attraction to the sport and to be February’s Team of the Month was a nice acknowledgement of our processes.
A run of games can give you a picture of a team but it’s only in the dark moments that you see their true characters. When things are difficult, stress or anxiety is plaguing the mind and knowing the best way forward feels like an impossible task. These milestones have got many of us this season, such as; the player who has been left out of the squad, the one who’s work commitments dragged him away, the lad who made a mistake and the ones who were with the first team but now feel dropped. There’s the coaching ones too where I’ve not got my point across exactly how I want it, where I’ve overlooked a player because I was distracted by another and when I’ve convinced myself that I’ve picked the right eleven only for them to fail when tested. It is the lessons from these low points that we must hold close so we can make better decisions on our future direction.
If I wind back a decade or so, I don’t see myself as the same coach and manager that I am today. That version of me was naive. He believed everyone else bought into the FAs long term development plan for players and that delivering from the text book would get the results. It didn’t. The text book is merely the map, how you navigate it is the skill and its often lessons in life that teach you how to use those skills in football. At that same time, my wife had recently given birth to our second child. The attraction of being paid to coach was too necessary to turn down but payment meant increased expectation. Similar can be said of the players that go into paid environments today. So, I ventured into the unknown thinking I knew what I was doing but I lost my way. I would hear of criticism and scepticism over my methods from spectators, players and other coaches. This would hurt but not come as a surprise as I too felt that sense of misdirection and felt uncomfortably lost in those moments. I cared so much about the game that these comments cut deep affecting my confidence and that had a spiral effect on me. In my opinion, I was doing what I needed to do according to the framework given. I felt frustrated.
Today, our short term run of positive form hasn’t just happened. It came together as a collection of all the hours put in over the months and years prior to it. Sure, we have done things to enable this success, for example; creating the right environment, supporting players to feel confident or able, understanding and testing tactics, considering the impact of life events and reassuring people that today is only one part of a much bigger, longer-term plan. We also accept that people before us and those around us have had an impact on shaping our group. It will inevitably be an error that ends our run and I’ve talked to the team about managing mistakes, several times, in preparation for this. Mistakes are natural, we often don’t intend for them to happen so we must be kind to ourselves in those dark times. What we can control is our resulting actions because our next move is vital. For me, I’m probably more focused on proving a point about my own ability to myself these days than I am those doubters of years ago. That said, I’m still writing about it and still carry the weight of my experience with me. I know some of our players feel similar but are on their own journeys of dealing with expectations; those younger lads that are still recovering from their academy releases, the men who have been dropped and the young ones keen to progress. We are all here, working to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes repeatedly and trying to chart a course that sees us be better tomorrow than we are today.
Low points do something fantastic. They make the highest points feel even higher. Nobody buzzed more than I last Saturday night. The view from the top of my particular mountain was fantastic and as much as I enjoyed my seat at the top, I crave more of it. For now, it’s on to the next climb and the next piece of development!
Comentaris