With the start of the Premiership Football seaon upon us, let us consider what makes the top teams so much better than most of the others time and time again. The majority of the premiership teams are good, even great, but what is the difference with the top three of four teams from the rest? So how can a top flight team win, and keep winning in the toughest league in the world. It appears to me to boil down to three things; maintain, adapt and confidence.

The ability to maintain performance on an ongoing basis, to maintain team work, to maintain health, and to maintain winning, no matter what, is clearly a key to Premier Performance. We have all witnessed the 'underdog' winning in sport, life and business situations and anybody can win once. A look at the Premier League saw Wigan at the top for a very brief spell at the start of the season a year or so back, yet Manchester United are always in the top few and at one point Arsenal were unbeaten for 49 successive league games. Their unbeaten streak began with a 6-1 against Saints 7th May 2003, and ended with a 0-2 defeat at the hands of none other than Manchester United, 24th October 2004. Champions maintain winning ways, often in most difficult, challenging or unlikely situations. Consider Ed Moses and his 122 consecutive 400m hurdle Races wins in top flight athletics or Ben Ainslie who always wins the big sailing regattas like the Worlds and Olympics where he has just won again - where ever you look in life, champions have the ability to maintain their performance more of the time. Secondly, I consider the ability to adapt is paramount in the Premier League.

The ability to adapt to new players coming in, to adapt to players being injured, to adapt to weather, travel and even a change of manager. The degree to which a Premiership team can adapt to changes is clearly a very strong indicator in the degree to which they will be successful. One very interesting point to consider is how players mature within a team, and how the individuals and the team cope with the change in social dynamics and responsibility. Players change status within a team by becoming the older team members and therefore taking on different social roles in the team. Young players are only 'young' for so long, and then expectations change and it is their ability to adapt to changing pressure that often dictates their level of performance. Our Premier League buys in players from all over the world now, and Chelsea for example brought in Shevchenko from AC Milan for a record £30m, took a while to adapt to his new Club and new environment as well as his price tag. It seems to take the foreign players a year or so to settle in and adapt - the quicker they adapt, the sooner the player and the Club can be successful.

Perhaps the deciding factor or the foundation of the three keys to Premier Performance is the ability to maintain confidence, to believe in your self-confidence no matter what. To develop unswerving confidence, so that you can remain positive about your performance and outcome as an individual and team even if a key player is injured or sold, is vital in the world's toughest football arena. When teams from the bottom of the league meet the giants, you can often witness the body language, spirit or energy drain from players when they face the tougher opposition with a better track record or more expensive players. Watch any penalty shoot and you can more often than not guess who will miss, or score, based on the confidence of their walk and body language when teeing up the shot. In business it is no different. So consider how your team does against the Three Premier Performance guides; Maintain, Adapt and Confidence.