Steve Black column: Always lessons to learn whatever the performance!

Feb 27 2009 by Dougie Thomson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

PROGRESS is a wonderful thing and winning is a big part of it.

Playing well and improving your ongoing performances is another and in the long run it’s very probably a more significant description of progress than even those short-term gains, because if you improve your overall performance invariably a string of good results will follow.

The most difficult aspect of progress to understand is that of lessons learned from games, no matter how good the performance and how positive the result.

That said, on many occasions not every win is delivered by a superb performance, and not every defeat is the result of a poor performance.

After Saturday’s initial emotional response to a result, we viewed the game and the players’ contributions with a far more objective eye.

Why? Because it will allow you to make better decisions in the future, either as a player, coach or manager.

There’s always something to learn from a game, either from the standpoint of what gets rewarded or gets you punished.

We played some wonderful possession football at Crewe without maybe making and taking the chances we should have with that much quality ball.

We showed an excellent degree of composure and professional patience, but on the other hand, as the game progressed, a mindset of greater risk and urgency might have brought greater reward.

We will learn from that and will adjust our team play accordingly.

We know we must capitalise on our possession, and kill teams off when we’re dominating games.

We must strive to cut back on personal errors. Improvements in this area, and in capitalising on our possession, as mentioned before, will directly affect how soon we bring success to the Galpharm.