Guest Post by Kevin Mousley

I am currently making a documentary for a well-known speech radio network on choking – the kind that happens in public when you blow it big time. The investigation is not confined to sport but sport is where it happens most frequently and in public.

I’m still in the early stages but what is emerging is that choking is not a choice, nor is it indicative of a moral failing or absence of courage or desire. In sport, notably golf, a sport where your opponent can’t physically interfere with your game, time and again players demonstrate incredible skill to get into winning positions and then fail because of a failure to do what comes naturally – chip a ball seven foot on the green; miss the black when it is sitting over the pocket or fail to convert when in front of the posts.

So why? Simply, choking is most likely to happen when the conscious mind intrudes on the sub conscious and this is most likely to happen when the pressure is on. The extent to which we operate on a sub conscious level is staggering, at least it was to me- over 90% of what we do at work at play at rest is subconscious.

As you read this, it is your subconscious that is doing the heavy lifting. Take the word ‘lifting’. You are not thinking L-I-F-T-I-N-G oh that’s ‘lifting’; because you have been literate for many years, your subconscious recognises the shape of the word and its meaning flows seamlessly into your brain without you consciously thinking about it. Think about when you misspell a word that you know how to spell; I bet your first warning is that the word just ‘looks wrong’ on the page.

Now of course if you are illiterate no amount of subconscious or conscious power will help you. The subconscious is only any good to you if you have a natural ability at something and have spent thousands of hours honing it.

Top class sportsmen are top class because they have a level of natural ability to do something that most of us find difficult; that and they spending much of their working days practising. As former test cricketer told me: “The idea that a sportsman or woman walks out into an arena and decides to be excellent is nonsense; indeed if you are a batsman and start to think like that you’ll soon find that it’s the ball that’s hitting the bat and not the other way around –and you’ll be out.”

Great sportsmen are great because they love what they do and are don’t really have to think about the mechanics of what they do- they just get on with it but when they consciously begin to think about what they do: could I improve my swing, when should I leave a ball, where the bloody hell am I going to place this penalty – that’s when the demons are unleashed into the conscious mind and choking happens.

By common consensus, among those I have spoken to, the sportsman least likely to choke- let me stress different to having a bad day or being outfought by an opponent- is Roger Federer. Federer puts his winning career down a love of winning rather than hating to lose; a neat and significant reversal of what you hear from most athletes. When he is in a tight spot he doesn’t think Oh Crap! – I may lose; rather it’s how do I win and he trusts his instincts from there.

Such is the shame of the choke though most sportsmen will refuse to admit it- it’s the ref, the weather, that flash from a mobile in the crowd or I’m tired. It may be any or all of those but usually it isn’t. You choke because you start to consciously think about what’s going on and the consequences of winning or losing. You choke because the conscious mind opens the brain to pressure.

All of which finally brings me to West Ham. This season we have one of the most talented teams to have played together in modern and indeed not so modern times. We have had better players but the all-round competence of our first eleven takes some beating. The bench is not so clever but even so, against relegation strugglers; it’s been regulation wins this season.

As the possibility of finishing in a European place began to become a talking point within and without the club in November; disturbing noises began to emerge. Sam began talking about the terrible challenge of the Xmas and January schedule. Fixtures would pile up; foreigners unused to the Premier League would struggle; the fixture list is a bugger, losing players to the ACoN or injury and above all and- repeated relentlessly – fatigue would kick in.

In other words footballers; who exist to play football; love playing football; are very good at playing football; among the fittest young men in the world, playing in the best team West Ham have gathered in a generation have been gifted a whole suite of excuses for failure. Imagine in your own working lives if the boss regularly pronounced on how tough the going is, how knackered you must be and hey! of course our rival firm are on a hot streak at the moment and we’ll do well to win that pitch– wouldn’t you be tempted to take your foot off the peddle even just a little bit?

Still, I don’t believe our players run out onto the football pitch planning to lose but I do believe as three points come within their grasp, or a loss looms the conscious mind has intervened more often and not happily.

It is true were weren’t at the races at Stamford Bridge or Anfield – but against Arsenal, West Brom (twice) Manchester United and now Tottenham, players did things they wouldn’t normally do. Adrian’s panicky punches; Song climbing all over Kane when Creswell was closing him down; Downing suddenly becoming shot shy; Valencia missing sitters – fill in your own examples.

Now football, or any sport where scoring is a rare event, is particular prone to random events and of course unlike golf, in football the opposition have a lot to say about what happens to the ball. It is possible that any or all of the above could be the result of dumb luck but there is a noticeable nerviness in the team defending a lead that was absent in the first half of the season.

A footballer I have spoken with says he was never told to drop deep and defend a lead- ever and he played for a defensive minded manager. It is the most perilous of tactics. When did you last see a manager with his arm out along the line of his own 18 yard box? No, they are much more likely to be urging them out. Dropping deep is a by-product of pressure; of players in the moment trying to think their way out of a problem – and the further they are pushed from instinct the more likely they are to choke.

I believe the solution is a combination of merciless drilling on the football training pitch for many given scenarios- so players are more likely to be instinctive under pressure – which I am sure happens under Sam, but more crucially the manager should stop transposing his own insecurities onto the team, something I believe he has done by creating excuses for poor performances past and problems to come, at every public opportunity in the last three months.

And why has he done this? Because Sam knows how to guide a team to mid-table mediocrity or to save them from relegation in his sleep; but he has never won anything and probably fears he never will- that’s pressure. He may well , rightly in my opinion, believe that we do not have sufficient talent or depth of squad to compete in the top four; we have suffered untimely injuries but then so do all clubs but is it wise to vocalise in public all the reasons why we won’t be in the champions league rather than coping with the notion that we might? He’s putting the pressure on not taking it off the players.

That does not mean Sam is a choker, as I said choking is not about your ability or a lack of moral fibre or courage, or even ability; it is a momentary fail in a routine task brought about by pressure but perhaps his limitations and his own private rage are creating the environment for key players to choke at key moments. And if I hear him bang on about player fatigue one more time … I’ll choke.