IN A TAW PLAYER EXCLUSIVE, Neil Atkinson, Gareth Roberts and their ‘inner chimps’ sat down for a chat with Dr Steve Peters.
In a revealing 40 minute interview, Dr Peters, who has been credited as a major factor in the success of the British Olympic Cycling team and has worked with Craig Bellamy and Ronnie O’Sullivan, chats about his role at Liverpool FC, his career and how elite sportsmen and women apply his methods to improve performance and whether he can help Gareth in his quest to stop being a bad nark.
Image courtesy of the University of Sheffield
Fascinating stuff – would love to be a fly on the wall for some of those conversation between peters & players
Unbelievable that! It took me over 2 hours to listen to it all. I had to rewind it at least 10 times. It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand it, it was simplified well. Our minds are like filing cabinets. If one wants to take on board what Dr Steve Peters is saying then you have to process the info and file it in your mind in a way that you can retrieve it at a later date. If you never use a file then after a few years you’ve forgotten it’s there. At the same time you have to put it there in the first place. I’m fairly slow at processing information anyway and I found every sentence so fascinating that I wanted to file it. I was pondering over it to the extent I kept coming round and realising I’d just missed the previous 2 mins of the podcast. Brilliant stuff. I’d love to ask him why when certain conditions are met I have a chimp that just lies in a hammock chilling out because he knows he’s getting his way whatever. He doesn’t have to argue his case yet it’s completely at odds with what I aspire to.
I’ll be honest, it’s left me wondering about Rodgers. Nothing negative, just this vision I had of him during the podcast. Rodgers was in Boston trying to convince FSG to hire him. He was explaining how Premiership footballers are all brilliant yet with some we only see 80% of their potential, some fail miserably and some are always brilliant and how he understood that the missing potential was better realised with a psychologist than with a great tactician. How by working on a host of peripheral aspects of a footballer you can push them all up to optimum performance (not saying conditioning your mind is peripheral but I think it’s fair to say we consider footballers to train physically rather than mentally). I thought back to Melissa’s piece about Rodgers reading the mothers letters out. I think if I was FSG I’d buy into it. I’d think, football is simple-ish. You just kick the ball forward, get it in the net or stop them getting it in the net. The prize comes if you get them all playing at 90% plus and I’m sure he argued that comes with psychology, not tactics.
I probably think Rodgers is not that good tactically, but in a chess game he knows you never surrender your queen and is prepared to sit there and study the moves over and over until he works out a strategy to avoid losing her. Again, I can see merit in it. All experience will certainly benefit Rodgers. Never mind file it, he’ll bottle it and have a shot of it before work each morning. Next season will be a big season in my thinking on Rodgers. We saw last season how ‘optimum’ the squad was. The team mentality was excellent too, hence Dr Peters rightfully getting a lot of praise. At the same time I don’t think he’s got much room for error next season. I think the whole model relies on the players believing in him. To aid that, a lot of the naughty kids from the back of the class have been thrown out and only the swots are left. I believe Sterling’s decision over the summer will tell us if we’re seeing cracks or if they really believe in him.
Sterling’s decision has nothing to do with what the other players think of Brendan Rodgers. Raheem is an emotionally immature young adult who does not have adequate support from his family and has fallen prey to being influenced by an agent whose ethics and motives are questionable.
Current and former LFC players, pundits and respectable journos have all spoken out publicly to try to guide him toward making a smart decision for his career. If he goes for the money alone he’ll walk alone. If he opens his eyes and listens to these wise voices he may realize he can be a shining star at Liverpool if he works hard and stays humble. Time will tell, but he’s already seriously damaged his credibility with Liverpool fans, and it won’t be easy to regain their trust.