Klopp is right about the challenge facing Spurs, Liverpool and Manchester City

Your brain tries to help you avoid pain. There is a Judge in your head that assesses everything.

If a situation occurs that is new, it triggers thoughts about difficulty, about looking silly, about being ridiculed, about failing, it triggers emotions of anxiety, stress etc.

Any guy who has ever thought of asking a girl out will know exactly what I'm talking about.

It wants to help you avoid the situation.

You become the victim.

Successful people simply say, OK, I must tackle this and regardless of the end result, go for it.

Success or failure at that point doesn't really matter, the act of challenging your brain, challenging your anxiety is the important action.

Slowly they learn to enjoy the challenge of overcoming the unknown, while others stress about it and don't even take up the challenge.

This is what Jurgen Klopp is talking about. This is how you behave. He and Mauricio Pochettino both know this, BUT, and this is the crucial point here, have the players bought into that?

How the players react individually will determine the end result, will determine who wins the title. That is why it is easier to win a title when you have won one before, thus Manchester City mentally have an advantage, Kyle Walker doesn't though.

This is just one example of why I maintain we should be using psychologists and sports psychologists as part of every player's training.

Sport is played in the mind, the body reacts to the mind, it is the mind that makes all the decisions for the body to carry out. Train the mind and you train the body.

We have seen Tottenham fail again and again at the semi-final stage. We have fallen short against big sides and had some successes. We are getting better and overcoming these situations, at handling pressure, but we still have mental weaknesses. We see that in player mistakes in crucial games.

The fans answer to that is sell a player and buy another, but how do you know he is any better at Spurs in these situations? Other leagues are not the pressure cooker the Premier League is, they are one team leagues or two in Spain generally.

My solution is to mentally improve the players or you'll just stay on the buying players hamster wheel.

Mentally work with players and you provide something to them that no other club is providing, mental training, not optional mental training when a player feels he needs it because he very rarely ever will.


Telling someone to enjoy a challenge isn't the same. the individual must totally feel that and a psychologist will be able to help that process much better than a coach can.

It's all a part of that winning mentality, doing what it takes to improve.

It could make the difference, it could make a huge difference.

Now, who is afraid to try?

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