A tale of two chemistries - when panic meets positive thinking

Key Principle - when two competing chemical states exist in the brain, the bigger one wins.

As is now customary, City and Real Madrid produce a corker of a game in the Champions League. But the headlines are undoubtedly City surrendering a 2-1 lead in the 86th minute and leaving the field at the end of play 3-2 down.

Much has been made of City's ageing squad, injuries, lack of squad investment (pre-January), and of course the elephant - or Ballon d'Or winner - in the room, Rodri.

And there is lots of evidence to support these notions.

For example, this season is the first time City have dropped down to 12th in the league for the fewest opposition passes allowed per defensive action. They are now stuck in middle-table obscurity when it comes to winning the ball back. They topped this metric in each of Guardiola's first two Premier League title wins.

Moreover, Skysports reveals that City have conceded 20 goals after the 75th minute this season - six more than the whole of last season.

And Jamie Carragher summed it up nicely...

"It can only be a physical or mental thing."

Richard Martin from Goal reports "Man City have a mentality problem".

So let's assume people far more qualified than me can cover the physical and tactical aspects, is there any evidence for the mental thing? And what might be happening in the minds of the City players?

This season, in games against Feyenoord, Sporting, Brentford and Man United (to name a few), the team conceded either two or more goals in quick succession during the match, or more frequently, they concede a succession of late goals to throw away leads and end up with an embarrassing point or nothing at all.

Last night, Guardiola put it down to 'bad decisions'.

So what's happening behind these bad decisions?

When a player experiences a significant setback or shock in a match, their brain assigns that experience a negative emotional value - a negative valence.

In other words, it's a stressful disappointment, and the importance of the experience influences the level of the stress response created.

This negative valence is captured by the mind in the form of an Emotional Memory Image (Hudson and Johnson, 2021).

This is mental imagery that the minds stores nonconsciously - out of your awareness.

Like when a passenger is sitting quietly behind you while you're driving a car. A part of you knows that there's someone there, but you're not really thinking about it, can't really see them and you're not giving them any attention, unless something happens and it becomes relevant.

When a similar set of circumstances occur, for example in the next game, when the team concedes a relatively late goal, the stressful mental imagery flashes up in the mind's eye of the player and it triggers a mild stress response - an echo if you like - of the prior disappointment.

This mostly occurs outside of the player's awareness.

Usually, if this is an isolated incident, a small spike in the stress hormone cortisol, combined with a conscious redirection of focus and a positive mental attitude is perfect to elevate arousal levels, increasing attention and reaction times, improving performance and instantly remedying the situation.

In other words, the positive chemistry overrides the negative chemistry.

But if it happens again (more stress), then again (more stress), and then again (even more stress), now when a similar situation arises, I don't know, say against Real Madrid in the Champions League, all of a sudden there are multiple stress signals all firing off at once and the nervous system is now flooded with stress hormones.

This stressed bodily chemistry affects thought patterns, confidence, and decision-making, it creates a player under stress.

(I would also argue this has a negative impact on energy levels too.)

When this process happens with multiple players in quick succession, like dominos the sense of stress and panic ripples throughout the team.

When the stress response of 50,000+ fans is also in full flow, very quickly the atmosphere changes, translating more stress and pressure to the players, and bad decision-making ensues.

Now, despite a redirection of focus and a positive mental attitude, the player's body is still stressed.

In other words, the negative chemistry overrides the positive chemistry.

As whenever two opposing chemistries exist in the mind, the bigger chemistry wins.

What can be done?

One interesting point here is that events on the football pitch are in fact neutral. No event is inherently positive or negative, it depends through which lens (or team!) you view it from. This means each moment that is assigned a negative valence can be neutralised.

Much like any experience in life can be viewed from different perspectives and seen through different eyes.

Another way is to work with and clear the Emotional Memory Images causing the stress response.

And of course there are a multitude of other ways that positivity, confidence and certainty can be regained - although this usually requires time, patience and practice, things that City don't have much of before their return trip to the Bernabeu.

What do you think is the biggest factor affecting City at the moment?