Striving for the best

I always knew that I was going to coach. 

I have been coaching since I was 18, so becoming a full-time coach in the elite game after retiring as a player was never a tough decision for me.

My playing career lasted for 21 years, starting at Chesterfield. By the time I retired at the age of 36, I had also played for Sheffield Wednesday, Birmingham City – across three spells, winning the Women’s FA Cup – won the double with Arsenal, and appeared for Charlton, Everton, Leicester City, Notts County and Reading.

The first of my England caps came in 2004, but by 2014 it had been seven years since I won the last of my 12 caps. With the 2015 World Cup looming and Birmingham turning professional, I had to make a choice: should I give up my salaried job as a coach with the FA to become a full-time player at the age of 29?

I thought to myself: “If I don’t do this now, I’ll probably never get a chance to go professional.” So I took the plunge and it paid off, because I went on to play at the World Cup, where we finished third, and at Euro 2017, where we lost in the semi finals to the eventual winners, the Netherlands. I ended up with 35 England caps.

My playing career had a significant impact on the coach I am now. I have tried to keep a bit of a player’s hat on with my decision-making, how I deliver messages and how I coach. As a player, I liked clarity and a lot of energy from my coaches. I also liked a lot of interaction, being able to freely ask and answer questions, so I try to bring that style. Having a lot of communication with my players is important, to have a really good understanding of what they need and what works well for them.

“Even when I was a full-time professional player at Reading in the WSL, I was coaching in the Championship with Coventry”

The transition from playing to coaching was seamless for me, because I had already been coaching for 18 years by the time I finished playing. For a lot of that time I balanced playing with working as a full-time coach for the FA skills programme. That was coaching five to 11-year-olds all day, while playing part-time.

For years I was coaching around playing, almost non-stop with different age groups at different times of the day. For example, while playing for Birmingham I coached at the Birmingham Centre of Excellence, as well as doing the Solihull College programme, where we won the English College FA national cup. 

Even when I was a full-time professional player at Reading in the WSL, I was coaching in the Championship with Coventry. I always had a coaching pathway in my sights. In men’s football, a player at the top end of the game could retire from playing with a couple of million quid in their back pocket, then say: “Now I’ll go and get all my coaching experience.” But for me, with a long-term goal in mind, it was important to get my experience while I was playing, even though it’s probably not the best thing for a player to have to do all that extra work.

Some of my older players at Rangers are doing a few hours of coaching now, and I was speaking with them about some of my experiences. I told them how I would finish training at Reading at 4pm, come home, grab something to eat, jump in the car, head up to Coventry to coach from 8pm until 10pm. I would not get home until midnight, and then do it all again the next day. 

It shouldn’t be the norm to come home from a day of training as a professional player, then travel an hour and a half to go and coach a team. But it is something I loved doing, and was passionate about.

For my players at Rangers, though, it kind of blew their minds when I told them the story of what I did. They were like: “I travel 10 minutes to do my coaching in the evening, and I think that is a long day after a day’s training.” I could only say: “Yes, it was tough.”  But I am so glad I did it, because it showed what I was willing to do to get to where I wanted.

“If you are a football person, you cannot help but gravitate towards this club”

I always knew that I wanted to be a head coach, but it was important for me to be an assistant coach first, to become more well-rounded. So after retiring as a player – and after four years coaching at Coventry – I became Birmingham’s assistant head coach in 2022. 

Thinking about becoming a head coach, I wanted to know how an assistant felt so I could have that empathy towards my assistants in the future. So I took on assistant roles, but with full disclosure that – while I was there to be an assistant and help the head coach – I had ambitions to be a head coach myself. 

When I was interviewing for the Rangers job, I had a few other offers at the same time. But as soon as I went to Ibrox, which is such an iconic stadium, saw the training ground and looked at the titles Rangers have won, I thought: “This is some place.” Because when you speak about football and history, Rangers are right up there. If you are a football person, you cannot help but gravitate towards this club.

Weirdly, it was also sunny the week I first went up to Glasgow. That gave me a false sense of security, because it rains a lot here! But the ambition of the club, as one of the leading teams in Scotland, was irresistible. 

I was also excited to step out of my comfort zone. I knew the WSL and the Championship like the back of my hand, so it was important for me to have some variety – different players in a different league, with opponents, managers and tactics I wasn’t used to. The whole project excited me, and I had a really good gut feeling about it. After many conversations and a couple of interviews, I was there with Rangers.

But you can never understand what it is like until you experience this club. As much as Rangers tried to prepare me, it is only when you are here that you truly realise how the fan base goes to another level. You are in a goldfish bowl, where everybody loves football – and the rivalries are real rivalries. People are mostly either Glasgow Rangers or Glasgow Celtic, but either way you will definitely know which club they support.

“It is good to be able to come away from the day-to-day to participate in the CEI and provoke some thoughts”

Scotland is a country where they live and breathe football in a way that is different from what I have experienced in England. For instance, here it doesn’t matter if you’re female or male. If you’re Rangers, you’re Rangers, and they will let you know about that and back you to the high heavens. Being at such a passionate club and involved in such a passionate rivalry is something I don’t think I would get in many other places.

It really is a different league up in Scotland, and the rivalries are super-extreme. Because of this, you don’t necessarily have the network of peers that you can have in England. So it has been great for me to be a part of the FA’s Coaching Excellence Initiative (CEI), which brings together coaches and managers from the elite women’s game to develop our knowledge and skills around leadership and coaching.

Having a network you feel safe and secure with, who really care and want to help each other, is so beneficial. There are a few coaches involved in the CEI who I hadn’t met before. We try to mix up who we spend time with whenever we get together at St George’s Park.

Among them is Steve Kirby from Bristol City, who I have got on really well with. I knew Remi Allen and Carly Davies well from our playing days, and it is great to connect with them because I don’t get a chance to see them as often as I’d like. On my last visit to St George’s Park, I met Becky Langley from Newcastle (above). It was good to hear about the growth that is happening at her club. 

As a cohort, we have been looking at a whole range of topics, from things like your personal brand and what that looks like, to how we work with multidisciplinary teams. It is a wide syllabus of what we can come across in our roles. The FA are very good at asking us what we want from the programme as well.

When you are an assistant or head coach, everything is so full-on. You are dealing with game after game after game. So it is good to be able to come away from the day-to-day to participate in the CEI, provoke some thoughts, reflect and maybe change things slightly that can help in your own environment.

“I want my players to bring their own creativity and fluidity to a formation”

A lot of the coaches involved have spoken about their game models, how it looks and the methodology, while some really good people have come in and shown us theirs. I have been adapting my own game model for some years now. It does change with the group and players I have, but there are core principles that always remain. 

A lot of my game model is built on being an energetic coach who likes to drive detail. There is a lot of detail in it around certain areas of how we play – I like to have a definite identity. It is important that when you watch one of my teams, you can see clearly what we are trying to achieve. 

For example, I like to possess the ball a lot, with purpose. But the key is to actually demonstrate that. Are you bringing your game model to life? Does what you see on the pitch actually reflect what your game model says? Week in, week out, I hear myself saying the same things and my players saying them, too. So at the end of last season, I reflected back on my game model and how we actually played – and it was there to be seen. 

There is also a lot of adaptability in my game model, which means being able to flip between formations and change a certain way of playing, depending on the opponents’ and our own strengths. I’m not a coach who bangs on about one way of playing – that it has to be my way of playing and that’s it. I want my players to bring their own creativity and fluidity to a formation.

I have also put my stamp on Rangers in other ways. When I was appointed in June 2023, the women’s team had only been professional for three years. My top priority was to get a grip of what that professionalism looked like and how I could make it better.

I knew I was going to change quite a few things along the way, but I didn’t want to make immediate wholesale changes. That can go one way or the other with players. I spoke to them to see what I could improve, bit by bit. I knew that if I could improve each area by five or 10 per cent, we’d get good improvements along the way.

“We want to win more trophies, and Champions League football is something we have to strive for”

It was about finding solutions and sticking to them. I’m not somebody who’s going to go in on day one and put something on the board that looks great, but which we forget about by week two. It was important that we found real solutions, stuck by them, and lived and breathed them daily.

As silly as it may sound, initially it was things like making improvements to lunchtime with the players. Then other things along the way, such as adding another physio or sports scientist. It was making the environment a little bit more high-performing, doing things for the players that make them feel that we are pushing in the right direction. We want them to know that they are really being listened to and looked after.

Of course, winning trophies helps. I will never tire of that. To win trophies is expected at Rangers, but the competition means it isn’t easy to do. In my first season we were one point away from winning a treble, which was a sore one, despite doing a cup double. Beating Hibs in the 2025 Sky Sports Cup final was my third trophy in 18 months. To win it three years in a row for the club – and twice myself – has been a highlight so far; not least because the first trophy of the season is super-important to lay down a marker.

Getting a really good group of people playing a certain way and buying into a project is also a proud achievement for me. Moving forward, we want to win more trophies, and Champions League football is something we have to strive for again, because the money that gets invested back into the club is huge. We want to make sure that we’re doing that consistently – not just to qualify for the Champions League, but to make the group stages and then the knockout rounds. To do that, we’ve got to make sure that we’re continuing to be in those top two league positions, which is getting a lot tougher.

I always want to strive for the best, to fight for everything, to win everything. But one of my biggest drivers is being happy and enjoying where I’m at. That means being at the best place at the best time, with an alignment of views and visions that suits me and the club. It is really important as a coach that you pick a club that suits you, helps you grow and that you help each other to do really good things.