THE art of taking penalties has been in the news lately, especially with the spotlight falling on Liverpool and England striker Michael Owen.

When it comes to penalties, I think you've just got to make your mind up and be confident before you strike it.

Like anything, really, it's about confidence. Owen has been in the news because he's missed ten out of 23 - but he never thought he would miss.

I was in a similar scenario. I always took the penalties without any hesitation and when Michael Proctor broke into the team (the season before last) I did the fatal thing of saying I'd never missed a penalty.

We played in a cup game and we had a penalty and I missed - I couldn't believe it - but I stepped up in sudden-death penalties and scored.

The next game we had Darlington and I missed again. I couldn't work it out, I had missed two in two games - it was bizarre.

So I passed the job on to Michael who ironically went up, took it and missed, and that season we missed three or four penalties.

It's just one of those things. The goalkeeper sometimes deserves credit, but the onus is really on the penalty-taker.

You do always have your penalty-takers decided before you go out but if someone goes off it's a case of who's going to be big enough to step forward and that certainly happens when it goes to sudden death.

You have your five arranged beforehand but there could have been substitutions and then you ask somebody to step forward and when it gets to the heat of the battle you sometimes find a lot out because some shy off and others will step forward.

You often find that it's the ones who step forward who end up missing it but you've got no qualms because they were courageous enough to put themselves up there and when they do miss them, well, you admire them more than the ones that shy away.

You always remember it if you miss - it's like your last game, you always remember that, so you're only as good as your last penalty so I think that if you've missed your last one, you always worry about putting the next away.

Southampton's Matt Le Tissier went all the way through his career without missing one and then he missed one and he said that all of a sudden he went from having 14, 15 and never missing to the 16th one with a bit of doubt and he had never felt that before because he's always been confident enough to score them.

I think if you're confident in your mind to step up there and put it behind you, it's just a test of character.

And for Michael Owen, although he has missed quite a few, he has put himself back up there under the spotlight in order to miss again or to rectify it, so I think that's why his manager Gerard Houllier has stuck by him.

Darren Dunning is the one who stepped forward at the start of the season and said he wanted to be on penalties and the one that sticks out with Darren is the Doncaster game that we won 1-0 at Bootham Crescent. It was the latter part of the game, a big local derby, big crowd and under intense pressure and he stuck it away calmly and that's his character. He always steps forward, picks his area and strikes the ball well and if the 'keeper chooses right and saves it, so be it. At least I know he's hit it well and I know with Darren that nine times out of ten he will hit the target.

So he volunteered, similar to me, until I made the fatal mistake of saying I'd never missed one so I think the only piece of advice I can offer to Darren is don't go blowing your own trumpet.

Updated: 09:16 Thursday, March 25, 2004