In times of need it pays to have an assured presence alongside you, someone you can lean on and trust to help you through the choppy waters which lie ahead.

These people possess an abundance of experience in facing life's little challenges, and are able to call upon these past experiences when required.

They are able to keep a cool head when all around are losing theirs.

Purse: Head Owl

They can spot what is going wrong in any given situation and attempt to rectify it while others allow themselves to be consumed by the magnitude of the event.

These people desire no reward for what they do, this is just who they are, with maturity having taught them the ways of the world.

It takes a strong character to be able to take the rough with the smooth and still come out smiling, but this approach is the only way some know how to work.

They know life has a tendency to throw curveballs at you every now and again - the challenge is do you strike out or hammer a home run?

Being able to accept your flaws is imperative in the quest to rectify them, so seeing the odd pitch sail past your head is by no means the end of the world.

Working hard to put things right and making sure the next delivery does not go the same way is basically all anyone can ask.

Ask Sheffield Wednesday skipper Darren Purse whether he plans to rest on his laurels and accept his lot or double his efforts in the pursuit of perfection and you will get a short, sharp answer.

Expectation

The experienced centre-half is crafted from the born-leader mould, able to boast 16 years experience as a professional footballer.

Unsurprisingly, he has learnt a thing or two along the way and accepts that the life he has chosen will not always be a bed of roses.

Take this season for example. Following his release by Cardiff at the end of the 2008/09 campaign, Purse quickly secured a contract with Wednesday.

He was also immediately installed as the club's new captain, placing even more expectation on his shoulders.

Purse accepts that his early form with the Owls was a disappointment, both to him and the club's supporters, but he is confident that he has taken the troubled times on board and emerged stronger for having been through them.

"On a personal note, it's been very much up and down," the 32-year-old told skysports.com's Chris Burton.

"There was pressure put on myself coming in at the start of the season and being made club captain straight away. I don't think I then lived up to the billing that a lot of fans had put on me.

"But I think in the last eight to 10 games I have been back to the sort of form I know I can produce and hopefully the Wednesday fans will now see the better part of me rather than the rubbish they saw at the beginning of the season."

He added: "I missed five games earlier in the season, well I missed two games and then was on the bench, after I had swine flu and that made me realise that you do need a kick up the backside to get going again.

"Over those five games I could see what was going wrong off the field, so I could get things right on the field. Sometimes when you're not playing you don't realise that and maybe it wasn't just down to me, maybe it was a team thing why things were going wrong. But hopefully we have put that right now."

Mentality

The Owls do appear to be heading in the right direction once more, after an alarming slump which put paid to Brian Laws' tenure at Hillsborough and saw the club slip into the Championship drop zone.

Former Preston boss Alan Irvine has stepped into Laws' shoes and has overseen two impressive away wins, against Barnsley and Blackpool, in his first two games in charge.

Purse said: "We went 10 games without a win, which wasn't great, and it was a shame that Brian Laws lost his job because of it. The players have to take the responsibility for that, along with everybody at the club, but we have moved on. Brian has moved on to Burnley, we have got a new manager and he's got two wins so it's gone well.

"The new gaffer has brought in a mentality which makes us much harder to beat. Under Brian Laws we were very good going forward, we were scoring goals, but we were too open as a team and we conceded too many. That's why we were struggling to win games.

"The new manager has come in and made us a lot harder to beat and a lot stronger as a team and that's showed in our last two away performances, with two battling performances and two thoroughly deserved wins.

"With the situation we were in, I think it sneaked up on us a little bit - dropping into the bottom three. Once we were in there we had to take stock of the situation we were in and that's how we have seen it.

"We've seen it as a new beginning. We have 23 games with the new manager and we need 10 or 11 wins from those games. Somewhere near 50/52/54 points is a magical number in the Championship, so if you can get to that you have got a good chance of staying up. So that's our target at the moment."

Next up for Wednesday is a home date with rock-bottom Peterborough, followed by fixtures against fellow strugglers Scunthorpe and Plymouth.

"The next three are massive, massive games for us," said Purse.

"They are all against teams in and around us. The points we have picked up against Barnsley and Blackpool are bonuses for us really, especially away from home. The next three games are big games and if we can carry on the run of form we have been on in the last couple of games, hopefully that will be a big turning point in our season.

Battle

He added: "We actually started the season quite well. I think we were unbeaten in the first five or six games of the season and we were just outside the play-offs. But all of sudden it did sneak up on us.

"We went three or four games without a win and without realising the trouble we were in, it stretched to 10 games. We weren't expecting to be in that position because if you look at the squad of players we have got, we shouldn't be in this position.

"But many a team have said that and they do get relegated, so it's good that we have changed things around now and hopefully we will realise that we are in a relegation battle. We have realised it early and we can do something about it."

As admitted by Purse, expectations around Hillsborough demand that the club compete at the top end of the end of the table, not the bottom.

They remain historically a big club, despite recent troubles, and the former West Brom and Birmingham man admits it was the potential of the Owls which helped to convince him to up sticks from Cardiff and move lock, stock and barrel to Yorkshire over the summer.

"I had two or three offers to mull over, but it just seemed like a good move for me at this moment of my career," he said.

"It's a fantastic club to play for and I think, out of most Championship clubs, if you had the opportunity you would join Sheffield Wednesday Football Club because it's got great tradition and fans. I wouldn't say it was an easy decision, because I had to move my family up here, but I'm hoping that it will prove to be the right one."

Purse admits he found it strange to be playing out a contract as his time in South Wales came to a close, but he was delighted to wrap things up with Wednesday so quickly.

"It was the first time I had been in that situation and I knew from January there was a chance I would be moving on from Cardiff," he said.

"They let me go and speak to Norwich, that never came off because of a few things that meant Cardiff wanted me to stay on until the end of the season, but I knew I wouldn't probably be spending much more time at Cardiff and it was time to move on.

"The Sheffield Wednesday thing I knew about in April and it was quite weird coming to play here with Cardiff at the end of the season, but that's football. I have always given 100 per cent wherever I have played and this is no different now."

Building block

Purse is hoping he will enjoy the same kind of success at Wednesday as he has with a number of his previous employers, with the hard-working defender having spent a large chunk of his career gracing the top flight.

He accepts that the Owls are unlikely to make the step up into the Premier League this term, but hopes he can play a leading role in helping them to achieve that goal in the future.

"I'm not getting any younger, I'm 33 next month, and I had five seasons in the Premier League and had a fantastic time," he said.

"That's the only place to play football, but the older you get the harder it is to reach those highs. Obviously I would love to do that with Sheffield Wednesday, but I don't think it's going to happen this year.

"Hopefully this season will be a building block for the next couple of years because the club deserves to be back in the Premier League. Hopefully I can be part of that, but there is a lot of hard work to get through this year before we can even look at trying to make the play-offs and get promoted."

While Purse appears to have plenty of football left in him yet, despite his concerns about his age, he has already started to plan for life away from the field.

He is working towards his coaching badges and admits he would relish the opportunity to try his hand at management once he hangs up his boots.

He said: "I have done my B licence and I am going on my A licence in the summer, courtesy of the Welsh FA. Hopefully I will get that done over the next year or so, who knows.

"It's not something I really enjoy doing, I'm not a great enjoyer of coaching, but I would love to get into management and give that a go. You need to bide your time with these things and hope those opportunities come around."

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