We definetly overvalue goals. We were rather proud of our team's defense at the beginning of the season, since it was best or second best even though we were sitting in last place. The defense isn't bad, but our pace of play and consequently less attacks for both teams definetly 'helped' in regards to that statistic. Generally, I think a good coaching approach involves both: reliance on stats (and as a rule of thumb: the deeper the statistical analysis the deeper the insight it offers) and qualitative analysis. What am I analysing and maybe what 'gut feeling' does my experience and knowledge tell me? (For all of those who haven't read it: a HUGE recommendation to look into "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahnemann about biases, heuristics and the working ways of our brain - highly adaptable to being a coach)

I'd agree with Tugay. I think there's a great benefit to having star players obviously, but especially from my experience this season: if they are not integrated into a system that works it's not sustainable to use it that way. As much as I hate to bring it up @Damir Djukic but our last game against you was the best example in my opinion, where our star player could shine because he was set up by the team for it and didn't need to do it himself - which didn't work for us numeroures other times this season. Additionally, I think football is itself too different from handball to be compared here, since it can be doable to defend with 10 players and have one 'rest', sort of similar to Messi at Barcelona.

@Fabian Kastner Although there can surely be done more, I'd argue that we include such training methods quite a bit. I sometimes feel like we need to work on our general mindset how we deal with 'failing' a little, and I mention this quite often towards the players, but a downward spiral is hard to break. As one scholar I recently read pointed out, 'adaptive perfectionism' is a strong base a a character trait: we hate to make mistakes, but they don't concern our self-esteem. In the specific situation we're in, it's quite hard to find a good foundation. With a significant loss yesterday in relegation battle (that can be traced back to missing resilience/self-esteem), we don't have the opportunity to practice until our next game on wednesday, where we need to be resilient and believe in ourselves, so this is quite a hard task to do. My approach is to focus on the little things and the things we can control, but it's easier said than done - especially if we can't create positive experiences in training sessions in between.

@Damir Djukic out of interest: What did you learn from your game on the weekend?

@Damir Djukic thanks, great recommendations! did you ever try to actively install a winning culture, through players meetings, as a kickstarter for the season or whatever?

I'm flattened from last weekend's way we played - and subsequently the crushin result in a battle for relegation. Even though we repeatedly reminded the team that the opponents would surely come out firing in their own arena, we weren't ready for that. I guess my main takeaway is that it isn't sufficient to remind the players about that, but to create situations in training that represent this type of pressure - and maybe teach more resilience along the way.