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“There’s a robotic element flooding in…where’s the freedom in that football match? The players are scared to death of making a mistake.”

Gary Neville, speaking after the Manchester derby, April 2025

Pundits don’t always get it right, but Gary Neville’s comment seemed to strike a chord with viewers who had the misfortune of watching the last Manchester der…

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“Imagine if you're offered a job where you're going to work six days a week, you won’t decide when you take holidays, you're going to have to travel twice every second week at least - spending significant time away from home - and we'll give you a one-year or possibly two-year deal, but you’re going to have to perform every week, and even if you perform…

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Visual awareness. Decision making. Problem solving. Just three of the terms bandied around on a regular basis when it comes to 'training the brain'. But what are athletes and clubs concentrating on when it comes to identifying and honing cognitive skills?

To answer the question, I spoke to Slawomir Morawski, founder of

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“I've talked recently to sports psychologists in high-level positions within professional sports teams who are facing increasing pressure…to try to better objectively test what they're doing with teams.”

Jim Doorley is speaking about an issue that’s affected many of the sport psychologists I’ve talked to over the last half-a-decade.

The US Olympic and Pa…

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“What makes this club different, for me, is how they embrace and welcome sports psychology and see it in the same way as the tactical, physical and technical stuff. A decision was taken some years ago where they said, ‘This is important and we need to implement it as well as we can’, and that's very special in football.”

Troels Thorsteinsson speaks from …

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“My job is made easier…because I've got coaches that care about people. That’s why I constantly keep coming back to the leaders of programs or the leaders of the environment and the way they operate. In blunt terms, it either helps or hinders your ability to get some of your messages across.”

Andrea Furst shoots from the hip. Our conversation is nominall…

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It’s a situation that will strike a chord with many sport psychologists. You start working with a team, hear all the right noises before joining, only to discover on day one that your handover notes are essentially a blank piece of paper.

The turnover of staff in elite sport, together with the tendency to focus on short-term goals and over-complicate t…

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Artificial intelligence (AI) helps sports teams with analytics, training plans and recruitment. But is there a space for AI in a psychological context and, if so, what would that look like?

In 2023, Markus Raab, Robert Schinke and Charles A. Maher wrote a paper on how technology and artificial intelligence can shape the future of elite sport performance.…

"You don't win by wanting to win. In sport everybody wants to win; that's the dream. But you win by having a really good strategy for success and having real clarity around what you need to do and how you go about your business."

Sometimes, the power of a statement lies in its simplicity. When I first spoke to Dr Kate Hays in late 2022, I left our interview with her quote ringing in my ears. It was a brilliantly succinct riposte to the soundbites (insert your variation of choice on the 'they just wanted it more' line) which regularly ring around TV studios.

Fast forward just over two years and Hays has laid out her 'How To Win' framework in a new book, explaining the psychological theory and practice that's empowered teams from England's history-making Lionesses to Premiership side Harlequins.

I talked to the former England women's rugby psychologist about the four 'building blocks' - spanning everything from a person's purpose to the mental 'stadium skills' Hays has helped athletes hone - which make up the book.

It's a fascinating insight into how a sport psychologist can work with coaches, players, backroom staff and front office personnel to affect change across elite sports teams.

To listen to our conversation, just use the audio player at the top of this article.

You can also find more details on Hays’ book here: ‘How To Win: Lessons in success from the front line of performance psychology, HarperCollins’

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In 2018, basketball player DeMar DeRozan wrote a one-line tweet: ‘This depression gets the best of me’. Shortly after the small forward’s post, Kevin Love penned an article revealing he’d suffered a half-time panic attack during a game against the Atlanta Hawks.

Fast forward seven years and around a third of teams in the NBA employ a full-time mental h…