Women's Team Manager - who next?

jojojo

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Following Marc Skinner's resignation, just adding a new thread here to talk about possible new managers. Hopes, theories, rumours, guesses - all welcome.

Most potential candidates I have zero idea about of course - including almost all those currently managing pro clubs and international sides. It'll be interesting.

Timing is tricky, which is part of the same picture of general indifference towards the women's team - though it's arguable that the men's team have had exactly the same problem over the past couple of years. By anyone's standards though - recruiting during peak player recruitment workload and only one year out from the Women's World Cup is not a nice schedule

A wildcard - Eva Olid. Spanish manager who won the Scottish Women's Premier League last season with Heart of Midlothian.

A comfortably familiar name - Martin Ho. Past United assistant manager, currently Spurs manager.
 
I’d love to see Ho back but why would he leave Spurs just now? United look like they are not backed by the owners and are on the slide rather than on the up.
 
It seems clear that they will be looking for someone who specializes in player development, irrespective of how competitive the team is over the next several years. And given that they've evidently given up on competing for players via transfer, is it possible they will promote a coach from the Academy?
 
Seems unlikely that we’ll get anyone with ambition, given the reason for Skinner’s departure. Who would want to manage a team when the club has made it abundantly clear they have no interest in providing the funds to make it competitive?
 
Lobster11 said:
It seems clear that they will be looking for someone who specializes in player development, irrespective of how competitive the team is over the next several years. And given that they've evidently given up on competing for players via transfer, is it possible they will promote a coach from the Academy?
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Judging by the lack of ambition from the owners, and the timing, I’d say this is the most likely outcome. Melissa Hamer-Brown is the current U21s head coach.
 
Sky Sports are saying we want to start bringing our own youngsters through, so could be we want someone with experience of doing just that.
 
Internal promotion certainly feels like the most likely outcome at the moment.

In terms of how are youth setup is performing - we're doing well and have been for several years. The U21 team has just moved into Carrington.

Whether the combination of a good junior and Academy program and smart recruitment at U21 is enough to win trophies is a different matter of course.

Spending on club women's teams is still mostly a bet on the future of the women's game - income and expenditure are going up but it's the expenditure that's rising fastest. That said, most men's pro football clubs in England make a loss and some of them also have a dream of the future in which they make so much money that their present and past gambles pay off.

United are notorious as the financial spoilsports of the WSL - for saying that a lot of current spending is simply not sustainable.

At any rate, if you're relying on your U21 team to offer squad depth for a big year with great cup or a European run, you need a coaching team in charge who can handle that kind of rotation and that kind of player development. Fingers crossed eh :lol:
 
One thing I dont get about the youth push is we sold our player of the year in the under 21s to Wst Ham this summer. Surely if we're looking to build on our youth it would have been important to keep our player of the year

Obviously we still have Drury and Anderson breaking into the team and we have young players who were out on loan and did decently like Jess Simpson and Emma Watson. But yeah still confused on Sienna Wareing being player of the year and then being sold to West Ham
 
I think it is time for Berrada to step up on his promises and disprove Skinners quite clear allegation that he is bullshitting.

Getting Martin Ho would be difficult, but interesting. Promoting from the academy would not be acceptable.
 
Totally missed the boat on Ho I would think, given Spurs seem to have more ambition to do well.

The BBC report says background checks on potential appointments are completed, which would suggest someone external? But I don't really have any idea.
 
Phil Neville?

His record isn't good but he ticks some boxes and would be an easy option
 
Rood said:
Phil Neville?

His record isn't good but he ticks some boxes and would be an easy option
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That's real out of the frying pan into the fire stuff. All my complaints about Skinner in terms of in game management and player selection multiplied by a bunch of fresh ones about Phil.

Now, if you'd said OGS - I admit I'd have felt a twinge of blind faith and optimism that my rational brain would have had a hard time fighting :lol:
 
jojojo said:
That's real out of the frying pan into the fire stuff. All my complaints about Skinner in terms of in game management and player selection multiplied by a bunch of fresh ones about Phil.

Now, if you'd said OGS - I admit I'd have felt a twinge of blind faith and optimism that my rational brain would have had a hard time fighting :lol:
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I'd love it to be Ole but can't see that happening
 
Rood said:
I'd love it to be Ole but can't see that happening
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Absolutely. His daughter was in our Academy a few years back and he often came to LSV to watch the women's team.

Not long after he got ditched as first team manager, he was at Bridgewater for his daughter's first team debut in our WFA Cup match. Smiled his way through an endless string of selfies, autographs and greetings. It was nice to be able to say hello and thanks to him in a friendly environment, at a time when a trip to OT would have turned into a circus.

But no, I admit it's in the not happening category.
 


This piece from the Athletic which is free to read talks about how the club want to go heavily academy based and are only looking at signing two more players this summer.

The choice of coach has to be someone who is ready to work in that situation and promote youth. For the foreseeable future our time at the top is over and we will basically be midtable hoping to not be relegated.
 
Ayush_reddevil said:


This piece from the Athletic which is free to read talks about how the club want to go heavily academy based and are only looking at signing two more players this summer.

The choice of coach has to be someone who is ready to work in that situation and promote youth. For the foreseeable future our time at the top is over and we will basically be midtable hoping to not be relegated.
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I just hope that we actually do push the youth if this is the case and its not just youth filling the squad numbers and not playing. If we're intent on using our youth to become stars then Drury and Anderson for example need to start a bunch of matches to see if they can step up and perform. If we're just playing the same players as last season minus the players we've sold and our youngsters are on the bench only to come on for 15 minute cameos and play when there are injury issues they probably wont come close to being as effective as transferred players.
 
Ekeke said:
I just hope that we actually do push the youth if this is the case and its not just youth filling the squad numbers and not playing. If we're intent on using our youth to become stars then Drury and Anderson for example need to start a bunch of matches to see if they can step up and perform. If we're just playing the same players as last season minus the players we've sold and our youngsters are on the bench only to come on for 15 minute cameos and play when there are injury issues they probably wont come close to being as effective as transferred players.
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The problem is that this model is going to struggle to work at all in the WSL. The league is basically dependent on player spending and the gaps between the big teams and the other teams is massive. United struggled to keep their good players even though we were doing well as a team but now even if any of your academy girls actually turned out to be good they would be gone pretty soon. Can see us basically being a mid to lower table team for a while.
 
Ayush_reddevil said:
The problem is that this model is going to struggle to work at all in the WSL. The league is basically dependent on player spending and the gaps between the big teams and the other teams is massive. United struggled to keep their good players even though we were doing well as a team but now even if any of your academy girls actually turned out to be good they would be gone pretty soon. Can see us basically being a mid to lower table team for a while.
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I dont think thats necessarily true. We got Drury to sign an extension and even if we play her and she does really well she might stay after that as well. As long as the youth players are rewarded when they do well and the team has some success from playing well it can work. For example Barcelona do this - in the league last season they played a load of young players and it allowed them to sell off a bunch of the older stars this year.
 
Ayush_reddevil said:


This piece from the Athletic which is free to read talks about how the club want to go heavily academy based and are only looking at signing two more players this summer.

The choice of coach has to be someone who is ready to work in that situation and promote youth. For the foreseeable future our time at the top is over and we will basically be midtable hoping to not be relegated.
Click to expand...

The idea that this is some sort of bold decision to embrace a youth-oriented philosophy is pure spin. This is about cutting costs even further, plain and simple. Ineos and the Glazers would probably axe the women’s team altogether if it wasn’t for the bad press they’d get. So this is the next best thing.

We’ll probably be saved from relegation this season due to the expansion meaning there’ll definitely be at least two teams who are worse than us this season. But future seasons will be tougher.
 
Resigned to not being competitive for a few seasons at least while the younger players come through.

Mid-table will be fine. Fine I tell you …
 
Looks like we will have to rely on good Cup runs in both the League and FA Cups before we even decide to challenge for the League and Champions League
 
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