Ben Wilson has revealed the lengths Coventry City’s goalkeeper coach went to to prepare him for the prospect of a penalty shootout – employing the services of a ‘psychologist’ ahead of last season’s Championship play-off final at Wembley Stadium.
The Sky Blues’ number one went into the game last May with a record 22 clean sheets for the season and coach Aled Williams was determined to ensure Wilson was armed with all the information available to him and the team to give them the best possible chance should the game against Luton Town be decided by spot-kicks. In the event, both teams executed immaculate penalties in the first ten kicks before going to sudden death, upon which the Hatters scored once more before Fankaty Dabo missed his, resulting in Luton being promoted to the Premier League.
Speaking on Fozcast – The Ben Foster Podcast, the 31-year-old City star said: “We do all of our research and we even got a penalty psychologist in to help us.”
Asked to explain, he said: “So he worked with Sheffield United a few years ago when either Aaron Ramsdale or Dean Henderson was in goal. Anyway, our goalkeeping coach got in touch with him and although I didn’t meet him because he didn’t come in personally, he sent all the information across for us to work on and explained all the percentages or which way penalty takers would go; would he go one way under certain pressure or the other way and what time in the game etc.
“So we were going through this on the day before the game, and we even had the young goalkeepers in the room – Cian Tyler and Tom Billson – and we all had to write down which way we thought they were going to go. I might have put ‘left’ for one and three of the others might have put ‘right,’ or there might have been one player that we all said ‘right,’ etc, etc.
“And I remember thinking, ‘does it really work, are percentages a big thing?’ But because there had been success with it, you then start to believe in it a little bit. We were in this room for probably an hour and a half to two hours trying to get everyone on the same wavelength as to why we chose certain players to go a certain way. But it didn’t matter in the end because all of the penalties were unbelievable.”
Foster then recalled a match from last season when Everton’s Jordan Pickford had the names of potential penalty takers with details of which way they generally put the ball when taking spot-kicks written on his water bottle in the game against Leicester, and the information was that James Maddison goes down the middle, so the advice was to stand up.
Foster said: “And he did it (stood up), and I was thinking, that’s bonkers! I have never stood up in the middle of my goal for a penalty. Like ever! That takes balls to do that.”
Wilson added: “I think there was a Middlesbrough player in the semi-final who puts it down the middle and the advice was that if he took a pen in the game then I had to stand up and just react to the ball, and I was thinking it would be hard to do that because if he side foots it into the bottom corner I’ve got no chance.”
