Owning Your Journey: Personal Responsibility, Success Redefined & Thriving on Loan

Host: David Charlton, Sports Psychologist and Mental Toughness Practitioner

Guest: Peter Ramage, Assistant Loans Manager at Newcastle United Football Club and former Professional Footballer and Coach.

Key Themes:

• Taking personal responsibility for your career development
• Redefining success beyond just playing minutes
• The importance of learning through adversity
• Managing expectations during successful periods
• The power of peer-to-peer mentorship
• Being vulnerable enough to ask for help
• Living in the moment and embracing the journey

Taking Ownership: Your Career, Your Responsibility

David Charlton: I suppose a lot of these players are going to be late teens, early 20s, and at that age some will struggle to take personal responsibility, won’t they? They’ll be hoping other people are going to do it for them. But then if you look across all the top athletes in various different sports, they do take ownership, don’t they? Personal responsibility—it’s key.

The Matthew Fitzpatrick Example

Peter: Yeah. I’ve just listened to Matthew Fitzpatrick’s interview on the High Performance podcast, and he talks about how he’s recorded every shot he’s made since he was 15 years old. So he’s doing his own stuff. He’s now in a position where financially he could just bring somebody in and just tell them to do it—”What club did I hit at Sawgrass last season or whatever?”—but he takes ownership of his own performance. He takes ownership of his own development.

It’s Your Career

I think that’s a big thing for us—at the end of the day, it is their career. We are here to help you get that career. We’re here to help you, we’ll manage you, and we’ll monitor you while you’re away. But at the end of the day, it is your career. At some point you will leave our football club, whether that be at 18, 28, 38, whatever it is. Our responsibility is to try and give you everything to be able to be at that higher end at 38 and still playing football.

So by doing that, you need to take ownership on that as well. We can’t give you everything. And sometimes with loans, we actually just leave them alone. We don’t even bother because part of that is actually growing up and learning how to deal with adversity without any help, which is a challenge for us because we want to help—this is our role, this is our responsibility—but part of it is actually just taking a step back and managing it and monitoring it from a distance, making sure that they are okay, but actually leaving them to try and find their way through the dark times themselves.

The Parental Approach: Gradual Release of Responsibility

David Charlton: I guess it’s a bit like a parent’s role in that way, isn’t it? Where as they get older, you release a little bit of responsibility, you give them more independence and so on.

Dealing with Parents and Agents

Peter: Yeah, that’s what it is, Dave. Some of the challenges is actually the parents. We have to deal with players, agents, we have to deal with parents. They’re asking questions—”Why are we doing this? Why are we doing that?” Right, there is a process behind what we’re doing. There is a reason why. You only ever hear from them when they’re not doing well, which is always the case.

Changing the Perception of Failure

But it’s a big piece of work that we’re trying to do at this moment in time—change the perception of failure, so to speak, and why a player’s not playing. “This is a failed loan.” Well, Harry Kane went on five loans as a football player, but he’s now England’s top goal scorer. Are you trying to say to us that every single loan there didn’t have some sort of impact and there wasn’t something within it that helped him get to be England’s number one striker?

Redefining Success: Beyond Playing Minutes

David Charlton: Yeah, that’s a fair point. What is success? If you’re a striker, you probably—some people will just go in with the expectation, “Right, I expect to play most games and bang in a whole lot of goals.” But the other reality might be trying to force your way into the starting team and score a handful of goals is success.

Success Isn’t Just About Minutes

Peter: Yeah, listen, we’ll judge—ultimately, the end game is for them to play as many minutes as they possibly can. I’m not sitting here trying to hide away from that fact. But what we’ve got to try and understand is, what is their role when they go out there? “OK, right, you’ve got to try and play as many minutes as you possibly can.” But success isn’t just solely down to playing minutes, because there might be—it might actually be the reason that you’re going on loan is you have to compete because you’ve played every minute in the Under-21s. Actually, is you not playing, but then maybe three months down the line finding your way into the team.

The Long-Term Perspective

So over the course of the season, you might have only made a dozen appearances, but there’s been 36 games. But actually, the dozen appearances have come at the end of the loan. So when you look at the minutes, the minutes don’t look great. But no, no, the purpose of you going on loan was to actually—you had to learn to fight to get into a team. So you had to go through that period of not playing. You had to go through that period of actually earning your stripes to get the shirt. Now the success is at the end because you’ve played 12 games and you’ve got two clean sheets, three goals, whatever it is. None of that—the success is that you’ve actually got through that and you’ve played 12 games at the end of the season.

The Harry Kane Example Revisited

The success might be Harry Kane somewhere down the line. He’s now England’s—he was Tottenham’s number one striker. But the loans he had at Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich, Leicester—he hardly played in some of them, hardly scored any goals in some of them. Well, that’s obviously got him in a mental preparation to be able to come back to Tottenham and fight his way. And when he was given that opportunity by Tim Sherwood, he grasped it because he knew what it was like to not play at those loan clubs. “Right, OK, well I’m not going to—” The loans were a success, weren’t they? Because he’s now understood that when that chance comes in Tottenham’s first team, “Yeah, OK, I’m going to grasp this because I don’t want to be feeling like I felt at Leicester or I felt at Norwich or felt at Leyton Orient or whatever it is.”

I know some of them were successes within that, but the purpose of the loan has actually served the purpose somewhere down the line where he’s England’s top scorer and England’s number one striker.

The Process: Breaking Success Down into Controllables

David Charlton: So in some ways to get to that point, you’ve got to break it down to the little processes, haven’t you? The small, tiny little things that you can do to impress the coach so you can actually get a game, which again will come back to the controllables—your attitude in training, whether you’re tracking back, pressing, your movement, asking for the ball, all those sort of things.

Regular Communication with Clubs

Peter: Yeah, and we’ll have regular contact with clubs. So you’ll get the player’s perspective from it, which is, “The manager just does not pick me. I’m training my socks off. I’m doing really well, but he just doesn’t keep picking me.” And you get the manager’s input and he can be like, “I just need him to be able to do this or be able to do that.” “Right, OK, well, we’ll feed that back.”

It’s Not All Negative

I mean, we’re talking as if all loans are kind of negative, but there’s other ones where it’s like, “Right, he’s doing really well at this. You’ve just got to keep doing this,” he said. “But don’t rest on your laurels. Things are going really well. You’re getting really good attention. Right, okay, now what’s the next part? So you’ve got through this first part. Right, okay, now let’s set you a challenge for the next part. Now you’ve got to play for the next four games—do not concede a goal. Or do not miss the target with your shots. So your shot rate’s got to be over 70%.”

Processes for All Situations

So it’s trying to give players processes to be able to navigate through the tough times, but actually once things are going really well, to make sure that they’ve got that focus and that process to be able to stay in that zone and be able to stay in the team and be able to stay where they’re at to be able to, hopefully, help them go down the line.

Celebrating Success: Keeping a Positive Perspective

David Charlton: Yeah, you’ve got a point. Let’s keep this positive.

Peter: I mean, that’s the thing. I think most of the work that we’ve been doing—a large portion of loans are perceived to be failures, particularly for young players. I think it’s us trying to navigate that agenda on it, because I think there is a lot of good work that’s done both internally with us, with other clubs, with other loan clubs, sorry, with other clubs who have loan departments like us. It’s just trying to find that niche of what is a successful loan. But then, yeah, when it is going well, come on, let’s celebrate this and utilize the learnings from that.

When Players Thrive: Recognizing and Managing Success

David Charlton: So we’re going to continue on this more positive track for the next five minutes then. When you see players thrive on loan and do really, really well, I mean, you’ve touched on a few little things that they’re likely to do. What other things do you maybe notice?

Increased External Interest

Peter: You notice that the general interest in them grows. Invariably that comes through the agents as well. You’ll have a player on loan at a club and he’s doing really, really well. Now the agents are ringing you up saying, “Listen, I’ve got X, Y, and Z from higher leagues or different countries that are really interested. The biggest question is, what’s the pathway?”

Staying Focused on the Original Plan

Well, the pathway is our club and trying to get them in the first team. That’s why you signed a contract. Why are you trying to then talk about them going somewhere else? Why aren’t you trying to tell them to come and fight their way into our first team?

But then it’s managing that player and then obviously the player’s expectations as well. So it’s trying to keep them in the here and now. Because if you start to look too far ahead and start to deviate from the path that you’re on, then that can lead to a slippery slope. And again, it’s some of the wonderful work that Charlie’s doing with the players, and also Colin and Kyle from the medical and the sports science side of things, to be able to keep the boys fit, keep them mentally right, keep them physically right. And then obviously myself and Shola trying to keep them right football-wise to be able to stay on that trajectory. And then what comes down the line, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Managing the Hype

It’s tough because young players, like you touched on at the start of it, they’ll read social media and they’ll see all the media reports and the articles that are written about them and the comments that are made, and they’ll start to believe in all the hype. And it’s trying to keep them level-headed and make sure that we don’t let them go off course.

Staying Grounded: The Key to Sustained Success

David Charlton: So I think overall what you’re saying there is staying grounded, staying level-headed, focus on the present moment, don’t get too far ahead of yourself, and yeah, you won’t go too far wrong essentially.

Learning from Senior Players

Peter: Yeah, it’s easier said than done. For young players in particular, we’ve got some senior players that are out playing football on loan and they’re a dream because they’ve been there, they’ve done it, they’ve lived it, and they understand what is expected of them. They don’t need any guidance on this. So again, sometimes it’s utilizing their experiences to be able to speak to the younger players that go out on loan and give them some advice on how to deal with some of these situations.

The Power of Peer Mentorship

It’s been great. We had a young goalie out in Colchester—Aidan Harrison. Aaron Ramsdale sat and had 15-20 minutes with him before he went out on loan and just gave him that little bit of insight as to what he’s going to face. That was invaluable. Me and Shola were old, washed-up ex-footballers now. Sometimes what we say is just in one ear and out the other. The players want to hear from their current peers. That’s great for us that we’ve got a club full of players that have gone through and lived the experiences that these lads are about to embark on, and we’ll try and utilize them as well to be able to help the players.

The Power of Talking: Learning from Personal Experience

David Charlton: I remember the first podcast we did, like many moons ago, one of the things that you touched on then was you were talking about your own career and injuries and how tapping into support and talking was really, really powerful. And I guess I’m hearing exactly the same there in a different sense for these players that are out on loan as well—making sure that you’re talking to people and you’re picking people’s brains and so on.

Living Through the Highs and Lows

Peter: Yeah, I think again, I’ll go back to what I said at the start of this interview—I think the biggest qualification we have is that we’ve lived what you’re going through, both the highs and the lows. I know if you’re feeling low why you’re feeling low. I’ve been there myself. I’ve had some dark times in my career through injuries, loss of form, not playing. I’ve also had some of the highs that I’ve still got pictures on my wall of—when we lifted the trophy at Wembley with Crystal Palace.

The Complexity of Success and Contribution

I was part of the QPR squad that got promoted to the Premier League, but part of that euphoria was the fact that I’d missed the whole season being injured. So I had the high of standing there with the trophy, but the low of actually not feeling worthy enough to be able to lift it because I hadn’t contributed. The other way around, Crystal Palace, I played 90% of the games throughout the course of the season, but then I didn’t play in the final. They were promoted and I didn’t feel worthy enough, but then people telling me—and quite rightly so—that I’d contributed a large part to being there. So I’ve lived it.

Being Available 24/7

I understand what the players are going through, and it’s an invaluable tool for us to be able to help these players before they go out on loan and then while they’re out on loan to be able to say, “Listen, if you do need somebody to chat to, call us.” I’ve taken phone calls in the middle of the night from players, taken phone calls at the beginning of the day because they’re not playing or the manager said this or they’re falling out with a girlfriend or they’ve had an argument with their mum and dad or their car’s broken. We’re literally, like you said at the start of it, your mum and dad and auntie and uncle and brother and sister to these players. We are there 24/7.

Proactive Support

And we can also start to pick up signs as well when we feel that the players might just start to be—or there might be something coming down the road or the path—that we think, “Yeah, we’re going to need to check in with them.” So then it might be us just going for a night down to watch a game and then catching them the night before for a coffee or something to eat and just kind of preempting maybe something or just showing our face. And I think it’s key for the players to know that they do have us, but also in the same breath, some of these young players have got their own people. They’ve got their own psychologists, they’ve got their own people they talk to. So we do not have an issue one bit with them players utilizing those resources that they have available to them and not us, as long as they are, like you said at the start of it, speaking to somebody.

The Courage to Ask for Help

David Charlton: Yeah, the key for those players really is understanding that—yeah, throw your ego to one side and yes, just speak to someone, be it a friend, a relative, or professional. That’s the important thing. It’s not a weakness ultimately.

Speaking Is Strength

Peter: No, I think it’s a weakness not talking. I think the biggest strength in a person is being able to speak when you need to speak to somebody. It’s the courage to be able to pick up the phone and just say, “I’ve got an issue with this.” Or, “I’m actually doing really well, I need to keep my feet on the ground.” So it’s the same when players are having all the success. “What do I need to do to be able to stay on top here? I don’t want to go down. I want to stay in the team. What do I need to do to stay in the team?”

It can work both ways in that.

David Charlton: Yeah, no, that’s right. Yeah, because a different set of eyes and ears—they can just help challenge you to take it to the next level ultimately.

Three Key Takeaways

David Charlton: So how are you going to summarize this in three little takeaways for the audience then?

Peter: You put me on the spot there. That’ll be a challenge.

1. Live in the Moment and Embrace the Challenge

Three takeaways: That you live in the moment as a player and understand what you are about to embark on and embrace the challenge.

2. Be Ready for Both the Tough Times and the Good Times

Be ready for the tough times as you go through them and the good times. In football, as everybody knows, lifting trophies and playing games, scoring goals, keeping clean sheets—it’s a wonderful feeling. Because football is a short career. You’ve got a hell of a lot of your life potentially after football to live. So enjoy that moment. Enjoy the challenge that’s about to go ahead.

3. Remember There Are People to Help You

Also, I think—there it is—there’s people around to help navigate your way through that period of your career.

Final Thoughts

David Charlton: Definitely. No, that’s fantastic. As always, thanks for your time and your insights there. It’s been great. So yeah, thank you.

Peter: No problem, thanks for having me.

Summary: Key Lessons on Mental Toughness for Loan Players

Personal Responsibility:

• Top athletes take ownership of their own development
• It’s your career—you must drive it forward
• Learning to handle adversity independently is part of growing up
• You can’t rely on others to do the work for you

Redefining Success:

• Success isn’t just about playing minutes
• Sometimes not playing early on is the purpose—learning to fight for your place
• Harry Kane’s loan experiences prepared him mentally for future success
• The journey matters as much as the destination

The Process Mindset:

• Break goals down into small, controllable actions
• Focus on attitude, effort, and specific performance metrics
• Set progressive challenges even during successful periods
• Communicate regularly with coaches and support staff

Managing Success:

• Stay grounded when things are going well
• Don’t believe the hype or get distracted by external interest
• Keep your focus on the original pathway and plan
• Use processes to maintain your level rather than rest on your laurels

The Power of Support:

• Peer mentorship from experienced players is invaluable
• Support staff have lived through similar experiences
• Being available 24/7 shows commitment to player welfare
• Proactive check-ins can prevent problems before they escalate

The Courage to Be Vulnerable:

• Speaking up is a strength, not a weakness
• Ask for help during both difficult and successful times
• Utilize all available resources—psychologists, family, mentors
• A different perspective can help you level up

Living in the Moment:

• Embrace the challenge of being on loan
• Be ready for highs and lows—both are part of the journey
• Remember football is short—enjoy the experience
• People are there to help navigate your career

For more episodes of Demystifying Mental Toughness, visit our podcast page.