Coach Kicks: Gemma Davies (Aston Villa Women)

The magazine’s regular coaches’ questionnaire, taken by Aston Villa’s head coach in the issue that marks her side’s promotion. She has no single favourite session but enjoys the in-possession phase and the strategies for breaking an opponent down. The player who has made the biggest impression on her is Marisa Ewers, signed from Birmingham City, whom she calls the brains of the team and a joy to watch train. Asked which player she would take from anywhere, she picks one of her own in the young Elisha N’Dow. Her players complain most about how badly the staff referee training games, and she admits she is terrible when she joins in. She learns visually rather than from books, quotes Theodore Roosevelt’s The Man in the Arena to her squad, and says the word she overuses is spicy.