When Oliver Glasner stood in the dressing room after Crystal Palace’s Community Shield win over Liverpool, he didn’t praise his players for the three points or the trophy. Instead, he congratulated them for something deeper: sticking to the plan, executing the right moves, and showing discipline and belief even when the scoreboard wasn’t in their favour.
That, he told them, is what really matters – because if you consistently do the right things, the results tend to take care of themselves.
It’s a sentiment that resonates far beyond the football pitch.
In financial planning, just like in football, the final score – the size of your investment portfolio, the inheritance you leave, the tax you save – is the result. But it’s the process that gets you there: careful preparation, disciplined decision-making, and adaptability when circumstances change.
Playing the long game
In football, you can dominate possession, create chance after chance, and still find yourself a goal down after a deflected shot. In investing, you can make sensible, evidence-based decisions and still see markets fall for a few months. Neither means the strategy is flawed.
What matters is whether you keep making those right moves – rebalancing when needed, resisting panic-selling, topping up pensions and ISAs when it’s sensible (even if markets are facing unfavourable times) – just as Palace kept pressing, making runs, and trusting their system even when Liverpool scored early.
Avoiding the scoreboard trap
It’s easy to be seduced by the scoreboard. Investors often focus on the latest fad, or glossy marketing, just as fans obsess over the league table. But if every decision is driven by short-term results, you risk abandoning a good plan the moment things look shaky.
Glasner’s message to his team was clear: trust the process. In financial planning, that might mean sticking with a long-term investment allocation, keeping insurance in place, or continuing a regular savings plan even when the headlines are gloomy.
Controlling the controllables
Football managers can’t control a lucky bounce or a questionable refereeing decision. Financial planners can’t control the economy or interest rates. What we can control is how prepared we are:
- Reviewing your plan regularly
- Adjusting for life changes
- Managing costs and tax efficiently
- Staying disciplined in the face of noise
Over time, these habits create resilience. And resilience, more than any single market gain or tax break, is what carries you through the inevitable ups and downs.
When results will come – and when they won’t
Even the best processes don’t guarantee a win every time. Sometimes an opponent will play the game of their lives. Sometimes markets will stay stubbornly down for longer than expected. The point is not that results always follow the right actions instantly – but that, over a career, a lifetime, or a season, they usually do.
That’s why the most valuable feedback you can give yourself isn’t “I won” or “I lost”, but “I made the best decision with the information I had”. If you can say that consistently, the odds are you’ll be ahead when it matters.
Final whistle
At Wingate, our focus is on helping clients keep making the right plays – even when the scoreboard makes it tempting to tear up the game plan. While we’d all love every match, market, or year to end with a win, what really matters is that the approach is sound, repeatable, and resilient.
Or, to borrow from Glasner’s Eagles: when you keep doing the right things, the wins – financial or footballing – tend to look after themselves. 🦅
