The Sports Psychology Blog
This Sports Psychology blog comes as Billy Sharp follows up his first goal for Sheffield United, with a second against Norwich City.
Football: Billy Sharp - Confidence!
Last season he was the most feared striker in League One. His goals were one of the main reasons for Scunthorpe United's promotion into the Championship. But this year, he has not been able to buy a goal. Until this week. Thirty six games into the season, Billy Sharp's goal tally stood at nought. Then a strike against Coventry City was immediately followed by another against Norwich.
As the season comes to an end, Billy Sharp has found his goal-scoring boots. It comes as no surprise, that Sharp's new found confidence, has coincided with the arrival of Kevin Blackwell. In the same way that Neil Warnock arrival at Selhurst Park, liberated Clinton Morrison from the confines of doubt, Blackwell's presence has lifted Billy Sharp.
It's not that Billy Sharp became a bad striker during his goal drought. But it's more like he lost that vital harmony between the goal-poacher and his instinct. Harmony, that means that you don't have to think about what you do. It's all happens naturally. Instinctively. You are in the right place at the right time. You can read the game, the next move, with total clarity. It all seems effortless. And it is.
Maybe the big money price tag was a burden that Billy Sharp found hard to bear. Maybe he wanted his opening goal for the Blades too much. Maybe he tried too hard for his manager Bryan Robson. All pressures that negate the strikers natural sense of timing. Pressures that cause you to doubt yourself...''Am I really good enough to play at this level?'
It has taken Kevin Blackwell's energy and enthusiasm to reconnect Billy Sharp to that special goal-scorers feeling. The feeling of supreme confidence, that causes you to feel that you will score every time that you go on the pitch. The feeling that Billy Sharp had for the previous two seasons. Now that the first goal pressure is off, expect Billy Sharp to be hungry to make up for lost goal-poaching time. Hungry to prove that he really is good enough.
