Opportunities to learn

I have been head coach of Manchester City Women for nearly five years.

That almost feels like a lifetime in terms of how women’s football has grown in that time.

Anyone coming into the women’s game has to be prepared to fight to make it better. That is true even at a club like Manchester City, where the resources and the facilities are pretty good.

Other teams are moving on as well, and we need to be at the forefront as much as possible. We cannot be complacent, so we need to fight to make it better. And when I say better, I mean more professional.

Women’s football at the highest level has only recently moved on from a part-time, amateur set-up. At City I used to line-manage Nick Cushing, the previous head coach of the women’s team. I got on really well with him, and we had some good conversations when he was here. One that I recall shows how far things have come.

Back then, we only had four or five women on full-time professional contracts – the likes of Steph Houghton, Toni Duggan, Karen Bardsley and Jill Scott. All of the other players were part-time and working other jobs during the day. So they were only able to train as a group on particular weekday evenings.

As a result, when I was running the Under-16 boys – following a conversation with Nick – we had the professional players from the women’s team come in and train with us. Nick had to convince a few people to be able to do it, and it’s the sort of thing that probably wouldn't happen now. But I think it was a great education for myself and our lads – and really good for the girls. 

“When we move, simply having a facility for ourselves is going to be really special”

Things have certainly progressed since then. And now we have a new training facility being purpose-built for the women’s team, which will be another great step for us. 

As much as our current facility has been really good, we have to be mindful that we are sharing it. For example, if we need to present to the girls, we have to check on the availability of a meeting room or auditorium space. So when we move, simply having a facility for ourselves is going to be really special.

A lot of good people have been involved in making sure we will have the right kind of office space and player space. But it’s not always about performance. We will have an area for the girls to have a bit of their own space; somewhere they can sit, have a coffee and discussion, and not feel everything in there is purely about performance. We want to evolve and establish relationships in the team, because that really helps with cohesion.

When the opportunity arose in 2020 for me to become head coach of the women’s team, I knew it would be a perfect next step in my coaching journey. I had started getting my badges in 2006, when I was 33 and playing for Tranmere Rovers. Myself and my Tranmere teammates, Robbie Stockdale, John Mullin, Paul McLaren and Gavin Ward, were all really keen on getting our badges. We really didn’t know what else to do apart from football.

We started off on the lowest rung of the coaching ladder, and have all gone on to have good post-playing careers in the game. I became a Pro Licence holder six years ago. It was quite an intense period, but also a really enjoyable one. Working through my badges also coincided with me working for the Manchester City boys’ academy. As well as coaching the Under-16s and Under-18s, I became academy manager and was involved in designing our methodology.

In the academy you are trying to prepare players for our men’s first team, which is really tough – and then, if not, trying to get careers for them. Under-16 is an important age because it is a period of retain or release. You’re sitting down with players and their parents to give them either good or bad news. That can be really tough.

“I’d had the experience of being released as a player by Southampton when I was 18, and it was tough”

It was a really interesting period for me, because when you become a head coach you’re not always going to be able to deliver good news. There will be times that you have to leave players out of the team, and you have to try to give them a reason for it. You try to be as honest as you can be, but it won’t feel to the player like it’s fair. So I learned a lot in that period.

I’d had the experience of being released as a player by Southampton when I was 18, and it was tough. I learned from personal experience of being on the receiving end of it – how I would have wanted to be told, and what it should have looked like.

I was part of a successful team that got to the semi finals of the FA Youth Cup, and felt like I was doing well enough to earn a contract. Chris Nicholl was Southampton’s first-team manager at that time, and he was the one who delivered the news that I had been unsuccessful in getting a pro contract. It was the only time I ever spoke to him. 

These days, that news would be delivered by people you are working with on a day-to-day basis, which makes more sense. But back then it was a cold way of delivering the news. All of the other lads at Southampton at that time went through the same process, so you just accepted that was the way it was done. 

Southampton had a really good reputation for bringing players through in that period. A few years ahead of me they’d had the likes of Alan Shearer and Matt Le Tissier, and a lot of young players had come through their system. I was in the same team as Paul Tisdale – who is now head of football operations at Celtic – as well as Kevin Phillips. 

Kevin also got released, but a few years later he won the European Golden Boot when he was playing for Sunderland. I do believe that experiencing some kind of failure when you’re a young player tends to define those who go on to have success. It gives you a really early indicator that your footballing career is not going to be like Messi or Ronaldo. It’s a tough one, and there are going to be bumps in the road. In my case, I ended up playing until I was 39 years old, in more than 600 games, as well as playing international football for Wales.

“Players should really feel that you get them and understand the unique journey they have been on”

Every player’s journey is different, though. When you are coaching, it is really easy and quite natural to make comparisons between players. I have done it myself. But, actually, you have to understand that players – people – are unique.

There might be overlapping tendencies that you spot – whether positive or not so good – but you should avoid bracketing players together to the point of thinking: “We need to treat that group of players like this, and these like that.” Instead, you need to have a really good understanding of each person you are working with, on a human level. You need to find out what makes them tick, what drives them, and about their family. That is when you tend to get the best rewards.

As a coach, you are not just this figure who is there to pick the team and shout out drills at players. There is more of a human side to it, where players should really feel that you get them and understand the unique journey they have been on.

At City, I have had the pleasure of working with some fantastic people. In the academy I loved working with Eric García, who is now playing at Barcelona. He is a fantastic lad, a fantastic professional and a real leader. You could see his leadership qualities straight away; he epitomises what a team player really is.

In the boys’ academy, there were so many players it was a pleasure to help develop. For example, I remember Cole Palmer and James McAtee struggling when they were younger because of their size. They had a lot of growing issues and growing pains. In years gone by, we might have overlooked them for more physically capable players at that age. They were two we really had to nurture.

We had the same feeling with Phil Foden. I worked with him for three or four years, and you always knew that if we got his development right, he would be okay. With Phil and Cole, we had to be brave enough as coaches to put them in the middle of the pitch, even though it might compromise a result. When they were younger, they were like dots playing up against big physical lads. 

“You have to get the balance right, of results versus personal development”

The conditions for Phil at the City academy were really good for him, because he played in a team of big, physical young men – alongside the likes of Matt Smith, Tyrese Campbell, Jadon Sancho, Brahim Díaz, Ed Francis and Joel Latibeaudiere. They were early developers, whereas Phil was very, very small – but you could see that his ability was top-end.

Some of the coaches in the younger ages would put Phil out on the wing. They knew that if they played him in central areas, he was going to struggle – and that was going to jeopardise the result. That is where you have to get the balance right, of results versus personal development. As much as all of us want to win – and the team wants to win – sometimes there are things you have to sacrifice in order to get the best for each individual. 

Rodolfo Borrell, who was head of coaching at that time, was great in that sense. He was the guy who said: “I don’t care about the result. This lad, Foden, plays in the middle of the pitch. Why? Because he’s going to develop his 360-degree scanning skills in there. He won’t be able to do that playing out on the wing.”

Having someone at the top sending that message, making sure we were really aligned, was a real eye-opener for me. Of course we wanted to win – and there were certain moments, like in the FA Youth Cup, where it became really important – but player development was at the heart of it.

With all of this learning from being in an academy environment, I felt I was ready for a fresh challenge. I had come back to the club as a coach in 2011 – having been a player at City a decade earlier – and done nine really good years of learning from different people and working with different types of very high-level players. 

Within a few months of becoming head coach of the women’s team, we won the FA Cup final. Later, we won the League Cup final against Chelsea. It was a good period, while there was a lot going on in that time with changes to – and visibility of – the women’s game. 

“I am probably most proud of how we have been in difficult moments”

One such change was to player contracts, which had historically been notoriously short across the board. In trying to plan for the future, we were trying to convince players to sign for longer, when they had been used to signing short-term contracts. When you’re trying to change quite a lot in a short period of time, sometimes it feels like running before you can walk, but I learned so much. In fact, I have developed a lot with how I want to try to get the best from people, whether that be staff or players. And in the past few years we have built a lot of solid foundations here. That will hopefully help us to be successful moving forwards.

The team winning trophies and any individual accolades is great, but I am probably most proud of how we have been in difficult moments. In my second season we had a hell of a lot of injuries, with many of our top players missing. We then had a turbulent time and lost a lot of players with those length of contracts. The following season, there was a big transitional period. I’m not saying it was only us going through that, but I feel that acting professionally and with dignity in that period is the thing I am most proud of.

It is always easy to see what people’s skillsets are like when things are going well, but I tend to be more interested in what happens when things aren’t going so great. If results are tough, injuries are bad, or there is a big player turnover, how do you handle those things? How do you behave? Being really consistent in those moments, and treating success and failure with the same level of attention, is really important.

When we beat Barcelona 2-0 in the Champions League this season, it was only the second time in 55 games that they had lost a game. With how good they are and the way that we played against them, it was a big statement from us. It wasn’t that we parked the bus and secured a 1-0, too. We really went after them in that game, and deserved to win.

“With City we want to continually be in a position to challenge for trophies”

But what impressed me about Barcelona was their reaction to it. They didn’t let it affect them too much, and that is why they are the best. Some of the interviews I saw from their players were very good. They said: “Yes, they were better than us today, but we know we need to improve. We’ll be better.” And they have been true to their word.

With City, we want to continually be in a position to challenge for trophies. In the past five years, we have made finals, we have won finals, and we have twice taken the league to the final day. That’s okay, but we want to improve on it, to be at the forefront in the WSL, knocking on the door every season and being there continually in Europe. We have the ambition to do that, and we have started to create the foundations to be able to do it. Of course, that takes a bit of time.

We know the reality of winning trophies season in, season out, is tough. You need many things to go in your favour. So even though we are in a results-based business, it is about enjoying the journey and keeping player development at the heart of what we do. Because those individuals are going to help the team try to achieve something special.

As head coach, I want to be the best version of myself every day. To keep adding to the experiences that I have had in my coaching career so far, always understanding that every situation is an opportunity to learn.