So most of you are fully aware I am still playing (although vastly reduced now only charity games) at the Age of 46. Now we all hear that Goal keepers peak later in life than outfield stars, we gain our temperament and our understanding of the game to perform at our absolute best. But what also comes is that at a young age g age and then as we progress Goal keepers have to learn more than anyone a skill so hard to describe and that is ‘HOW TO OVER COME NEGATIVITY’ now this can be simply, sorry you are not good enough go away and develop more when we are young. It could be as I have experienced this past week - No your old and past it we want someone young not to pull someone out of retirement. So how do we over come that negativity, how do we as a goalkeeping community rally round someone who has faced such negativity. Also for those of us coaching how we rebuild someone who has had that negativity thrust upon them! Part of it is in our mindset. We grab the gloves and want to prove a point. But that only masks over the cracks. That Negativity can cause. So when you reflect you analyse and you plan how you can make those improvements, maybe show how you can rove folks wrong but most importantly how you don’t just paper over the cracks. If I have a keeper working with me in my coaching sessions and they are not as good as other keepers in the group. Do I put them down - NO, do I paper over it - NO, I encourage, I give extra support, provide them other material to help get the coaching points across for them to improve. If a Keeper from anywhere comes to me and has received one of those Famed excuses - YOU’RE TOO YOUNG, YOU'RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH or YOU’RE TOO OLD. How do I as a coach or fellow goal keeper address it? How would you address it? So there’s a famous part in Evan Almighty I like to use for this - If you Ask God for courage, does he give you courage or does he give you the chance to be courageous, If you ask for Patience, does he bless you with Patience or give you the opportunity to be Paitent?

How many of us GKs are going to do this from now on when our teams are winning ha ha

Thank you so much, I have managed to get below 10K likes! Roll on level 9

Yesterday we had 4 of our keepers in cup finals. All 4 won their final 🏆 Very proud coaches .... they all work so hard 👏

Better performance today but just fell short. We go again tomorrow in the League Cup Final