But, you know, have you took a lot of that from what was successful at City or, or gone in kind of more with a bit of an open mind?

Yeah, more, more, probably more of an open mind, a little bit more experience in my coaching career and, and, and understanding what you're working with.

Um, and that's not to say you still have those demands because you're also, when you come to a club, you're also questioning the decision to bring you to the club.

You know, if you want, you want this certain style and identity, then of course we need the tools to be able to do that.

But yeah, I, I, I feel I had a period in my second season at City, um, we had a hell of a lot of injuries.

Lost Lucy, lost, uh, Kira Walsh, and, you know, we had our drop-off to the, to the next layer of players was, like, quite significant.

And I remember being, like, really, really dogged in my determination to continue playing that style, to continue playing that way.

She's also coming late into preseason, but also the fan base can be brutal, especially when you don't get them wins on the board that they're used to.

How, how hard is that though to, to stick to principles in such a high pressure environment when y- you know, sometimes if the results aren't going well, again, all levels of the game when you think right, "The easiest thing in the world for me to do would be X," but it goes against what I wanna do in the long term and If I do that now for short-term gain, long term it's gonna, it's gonna cost us." Having that, maybe the bravery to stick to what you, you believe in as a coach.

Yeah.

I suppose like for us, if we, if we look at this season, our intention and ambition is to go into every game looking to win.

But it was the same last season.

We were just unable to execute that for a number of reasons.

And, you know, one of the basic fundamentals was like fitness, fitness levels, and being able to repeatedly press the way we want to.

You can see now we're a lot more aggressive in preseason because we've had that stability there and that platform to be able to do that But I feel, you know, as a coach, you, you wanna be true to yourself.

I mean, how do you feel about your squad going into the new season?

So I suppose if there was one thing that you wanted people to know about you that maybe they don't see on the TV or they don't read about, what might that be?

I don't know.

I'd like to think that people probably do get a good sense of who I am.

I think it's really difficult as a head coach, isn't it? You know, you face press conferences, you go into interviews and you're representing yourself, but you're also really representing your club and you have to exude a manner which suggests that regardless of where you are in that moment, that difficult times, you have a professional standard to uphold because that's your job.

And you cannot tell everyone what's going on behind the scenes of course you can't because that would be like really unprofessional and yeah and not also like negative things but also really good things as well and i feel being consistent and making sure that the messages are strong um and and again i'm excited about this group that we work with i love being at this football club I think it's an incredible place to be.

The supporters are incredible.

The people here are so, so good.

Do you firstly feel that shifting mentality? And I suppose off the back of that, do you feel like the rebuild was maybe a bit underappreciated, the work that yourself in particular had to do last season?

And what is it, maybe in terms of changes that you want from your team? Obviously, you've made all these changes personnel-wise, but in terms of style, in terms of what we're going to see, what things can we expect that may be a bit different?

Some slight tweaks.

I think supporters probably saw glimpses last season of us being a really high pressing team.

We want to continue with that.

We feel we're in a better place now to do that because we've got more options and more fitness into us.

And it's, you know, it's a hard job to be able to do that for 90 minutes.

So I think having resource from the sidelines to help us with that is really key.

What are you expecting from the league as a whole? It looks very strong this year.

Mm.

We had the game in the bag, uh, at home, um, and conceding in, in overtime to, to go 1-1.

And away, we could have nicked it really late.

So, um, they were finely balanced, those games.

You know, two teams that like to have the ball.

Um, yeah, they're probably a, a little bit a- ahead of us in a sense of, um, well, certainly in their position in the table, but also in their evolution of, of working with Dario.

He's had a good time there-

What would you say to people who are maybe thinking about coming down and sort of like umming and ahing about maybe getting down and supporting the girls? 'Cause it has really proved to be a bit of a difference maker.

Here at Melwood, an iconic place, it must be a nice place to, to come to work and, uh, get stuck in.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's an amazing place.

I think, uh, I was fortunate enough to come here on a preseason game and-... was actually asking questions around kind of business.

We've got everything here for the women's, and it is.

You know, the canteen staff are here for us.

The, the, uh, ground staff are here for us every day, and I think it's just really, really a n- a good opportunity to have a, a real solid platform to work from.

Yeah.