Why did Chelsea win the FA Cup on Saturday? Obviously, because they were mentally tougher. Because they wanted it more. And why did Barcelona beat Manchester United in the Champions League final last Wednesday? Because they had greater mental toughness.

But let us attempt a less fashionable explanation. After all, it was clearly Everton who wanted it more. They had a great deal of mental toughness, too. But Chelsea won because they played better football. They had better players and they scored more goals. And Barcelona - well, they also played better than their opponents. In fact, in both these matches, there is not much doubt that the second explanation holds more of the truth. Talent 2 Mental Toughness 1. Or nil.

I am, you see, wrestling with a typescript of a new book aimed at sports psychology students. It is called Mental Toughness: The Mindset Behind Sporting Achievement, a specialist work by Michael Sheard to be published in due course. I wish it all the best, I am sure it is an excellent example of its genre.

It nobly and perhaps quixotically attempts to define what is indefinable - but then that is the job of psychology, and in the trying and falling short, no doubt something can be learnt. The book includes plenty of material from newspapers and I, among many, have been quoted; yes, there I am, banging on about all those times when the result depended on mental rather than physical circumstances.

The idea of mental toughness has, as the author noted, become the default explanation for any victory and any defeat that takes place in sport. Rum, that. When I first started writing about sport for this newspaper, way back in the Pleistocene, the exact opposite was the case. Back then, the tendency was for an expert, a press-box doyen, to assess - not always without self-regard - the technical and tactical reasons for victory and defeat.

I have, I suppose, been one of many who worked against this trend, was quick to delve into the mental strife of the athlete, to seek an explanation in minds as well as - perhaps even instead of - in bodies. But now “mental toughness” has become the instant, lazy, unthinking explanation for every result.

We all, me included, praised the mental toughness of Sir Steve Redgrave as he racked up his five gold medals. And I stand by every word of it: when other people in sport are mentally tough, Redgrave gets royalties. But what about his physical strength? His balance, his hand speed, his co-ordination? What about his ability to bring about a series of explosions of total power over 2,000 metres of water?

Did Roger Federer suffer mental disintegration at the great Wimbledon final last year? If anything, he wanted it more than Rafael Nadal. But perhaps it was the case that in that final set Nadal's court coverage and the sustained savagery of his deep hitting was too much for Federer's game?

We have all plunged deep into the fascinating byways of sport's mental side and it has become the new orthodoxy. Mental toughness is all very well, but you need talent as well. In fact, you need supreme talent. Sheard certainly agrees, by the way. OK then, we have established the fact that mental toughness is important.

We now need to work towards a synthesis - a way of understanding the way that, in the very best performers, mental toughness and supreme ability are not so much linked as inextricable: one feeding off the other.

Cool and the gang find admirers in short supply

Sulk one: have you ever seen such a bunch of sulkers as the West Indies cricket team? I don't think I have ever witnessed an international sporting side play with such extraordinary indifference, not only to defeat but to personal performance. (Let me at once exempt the splendid Shivnarine Chanderpaul from any criticism whatsoever.)

They came in at short notice, they didn't want to be here, they didn't like the weather. So they thought they'd take the money but keep their pride and dignity intact by not bothering even to try to play well. They reminded me of a macho man somehow forced to do the washing-up: OK, I'll do it, but I'll do it badly, right?

They took their tone from their captain, Chris Gayle, who told us all that he can't be bothered with Test cricket - yes, Chris, we noticed - and infinitely prefers the one-day game. This is presumably because it takes so much less time to lose.

Gayle is greatly admired for his cool. Cool is a power-trip, a way of gaining power by affecting indifference to things that matter a good deal to other people. Well, here is a rule about the mental side of sport. If you are indifferent to sport, if you honestly don't care about it, then there is no point whatsoever in doing it, or being watched doing it. Gayle needs to be given a lifetime ban for the crime of cool.

Past caring for the Ronaldo long goodbye

Sulk two: God, I wish Cristiano Ronaldo would go to Real Madrid and do so right now, today, this very minute. I don't think I can bear any more of this yes, no, maybe, I don't know, I can't tell, it's all down to my good friend God. I have gone way beyond caring on this issue. On Tuesday, Ronaldo was all set to stay at Manchester United; on Thursday, United had lost the Champions League final and he was sulking again. Well, it wasn't his fault United lost. It wasn't his fault that he failed to impose himself (again) on a great occasion. No, it was the tactics, right?

Real and their likely next president, Florentino Pérez, are saying that they want Ronaldo, not because that will help them win trophies but because they will make a lot of money by exploiting him, with friendlies and shirt sales and so forth. It's a rum way to run a sporting organisation, but it sounds like the perfect gig for Ronaldo: not the galáctico theory of running a football club, but the bimbo theory. Nothing wrong with that, so long as a girl gets a fair rate for the job.

Why punters should object to grunter's holy unholy racket

It was the traditional timidity of tennis umpires that gave us the worst excesses of John McEnroe. A default or two early in his career would have saved us all a great deal of unpleasantness. Now the same timidity about grunting and shrieking has reached its logical conclusion in the absurd excesses of Michelle Larcher De Brito, right. Check her out on YouTube: it's a vile and utterly gratuitous din.

Aravane Rezaï, the Portuguese's opponent in the French Open last week, complained to the umpire about it, but the umpire did nothing. Rezaï eventually won. “Maybe it's the way she tries to impress an opponent,” she said. No maybe about it: shrieking is a declaration of ownership. It also prevents the opponent hearing the ball on your racket. It's not an inadvertent thing, it's a dodgy tactic mixed up with gamesmanship.

“I can do nothing about it,” Larcher De Brito said. “It's part of my game.” Only half that statement is true. Opponents should make objections plain. So should punters.