Dan Ballard Exclusive: I Love Arsenal but I Feel Powerful Now at Sunderland
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https://www.givemesport.com/exclusive-dan-ballard-sunderland-love-arsenal/
Daniel Ballard has stepped up and beefed up to become a colossus for
Sunderland. And it’s all driven by a surprising inner belief that he isn’t quite good enough at what he does…
He told
GiveMeSport: “I was never, as a young man, the most talented player and had to work quite hard to fight for my opportunities. And even playing now, I sort of carry that around with me. I have to work hard to fight for everything. But after all the tough bits, I think fans appreciate that, especially in the Premier League.
“It’s perhaps a British style of play - tough and doing the simple things really well. And always fighting for the club you’re playing at. You might stop progressing. So it's just about going into every game, and feeling that nervousness and trying to keep proving to everyone that you know you're good enough, you're at the level, and you can help teams.
“I love Arsenal for everything they've done for me, but I suppose I never really had that real connection with the first team. It was more sort of the academy and, you know, all the staff and the amazing people that helped me. I never got that real chance in the first team. So I was never not going to celebrate in a stadium like that in such a big game. I was always going to celebrate. I'll just always give 100% and I think fans appreciate that.”
“Last year was a real stop-start season for me. I felt really good the season before, and I was looking to kick on last year but I was a bit hampered. My season was very stop and start. I kind of saved the season by getting back fit for the play-offs just in time, and then I did a lot of work this summer.
“I've been in the gym a lot, put a little bit more size on this year, because of the physicality of the Premier League It helps to feel powerful, feel strong. I put maybe half a kilo on, maybe even more in the end. I seem to be playing well with it. So it's got to try and maintain that, keep going.
“All my learning experiences helped me, helped me grow as a player. I had a great year at Blackpool. We got promoted there, and then going to Millwall was special in its own way. And that was the first year playing in front of fans after COVID and thankfully, I've done really well. I managed to sort of get the support of the fans quite early on, and feel like we had a great, great connection while I was there. I really felt the support from them. They helped me in that first year in the Championship.”
“We've had a fantastic start as a team. Going up through the play-offs, there's no better feeling, and it really brings a squad together. We've added a lot of new players this summer, and things are going really well.
“There's always that bit of doubt of you being involved but I’ve managed to get quite a bit of game time in the Premier League this year, so we're extremely confident. There's a lot of lads that deserve the opportunity to play in the Premier League, but haven't quite got that chance yet. So there's a really exciting group.”