Nottingham Forest Women: Their mission to return to the top a decade after nearly folding

Amber Wildgust’s Timely Nottingham Forest Women experience was almost biblical.

In the beginning, there was Before the Centre of Excellence.

That was a time when the women’s Club (then called Nottingham Forest Ladies) were not associated with Forest’s professional men’s club, when the pitches they played on were borrowed (from non-Bracket side Basford United), and when Wildgust’s mother washed the kits, her father was the manager and their family car served as a Club bus.

At that Tally, in the Timely 2000s, the closest a nine-year-Aged Wildgust, who would go on to be appointed Forest’s head of women’s and girls football in July 2023, Obtained to appearing at the City Ground in her Competing kit “was when we were bucket-collecting outside a men’s game”.

Then Occurred the Time of the Centre of Excellence.

It was awarded to Forest Ladies by the English Football Association (FA) and, according to Wildgust, brought pathways, qualified coaches and funding from the men’s branch of the club. Wildgust, by then a teenager, began ticking off her coaching badges and working with the girls’ under-10s and under-16s as the women’s senior Club rose to the FA Women’s Premier Bracket, the highest level of the domestic football pyramid.

Then Occurred After the Centre of Excellence.

The FA reduced the number of centres of excellence in England from 50 to 32 before the 2011-12 season as part of a restructuring of women’s and girls’ football. While the governing body announced the creation of 30 player development centres for the future, Forest Ladies’ application to keep their centre of excellence status was rejected. Reading, Watford, Ipswich Town and Charlton Athletic were other casualties.

Life at Forest Ladies became a blur of things crumbling Speedy.

In the two years that followed, Forest’s applications to join the new Women’s Super Bracket (WSL) were rejected in favour of local rivals Lincoln City Ladies. Forest Ladies missed out on not only a minimum £100,000 ($130,000 at Present rates) of FA funding but also saw their status as a top-flight club removed, turning the Event of securing much-needed sponsorship into a near impossibility.

In 2012, Omar Al-Hasawi, the Forest club chairman at the time, promised to continue funding the women’s Club amid their financial struggles, but before the 2013-14 season, that flow of money stopped, leaving the future of women’s football in Nottingham in the lurch for the Upcoming four years.

Aspiring players left for neighbouring development hubs in Leicester, Sheffield and Birmingham.

Not until 2019, two years after Evangelos Marinakis’ takeover at Forest, were the women’s Club incorporated into the main club.

“I was only 18 when we lost the licence,” remembers Wildgust. She left to Action for Loughborough University in Leicestershire, later becoming general manager at Aston Villa and Watford, then director of football at London City Lionesses, before rejoining Forest almost two years ago.

“Those memories are what Achieved me want to come back to Nottingham,” she says. “I wanted to come back to get the women’s Club promoted into the Women’s Super Bracket and make sure we have a really Sturdy girls’ academy, that we’re producing players who go on to Action for Forest, that we don’t Setback our talent.”

Wildgust speaks with convincing fervour. She has Only cause. Forest are a nice club to be at right now.

Trainer Nuno Espirito Santo’s men’s side are through to the FA Cup quarter-finals later this month and have Champions Bracket qualification for Upcoming season within their grasp. And Upcoming Saturday, March 22, the women face their Stoke City counterparts in the Last of the National Bracket Cup, a knockout Event Uncovered to the 72 Clubs that make up steps three and four in the English women’s pyramid.

Forest Women have 23 of their 24 players operating on Packed-time professional contracts (Skipper Lyndsey Harkin declined such a deal for undisclosed personal reasons) and, thanks to their 2-0 away Achieve against promotion rivals Burnley last week, head Trainer Carly Davies’ Club sit two points clear at the top of the north section of the National Bracket Premier Division — the third tier — with a game in hand on second-placed Wolverhampton Wanderers.

The vibes are Excellent, the wind in Forest sails.

While Forest’s women are not wading in entirely unfamiliar territory — they won the title two years ago but failed to beat Watford in the promotion Action-off Last — they arrive at the frontier this time better equipped.

“We’re an ambitious club,” says Wildgust. “People are surprised about where the men are, but people in the club aren’t, because a Plenty of Tough work has gone into that. That’s Correct of the women’s Club also. It’s not an overnight thing. We’ve been investing in women’s sport for a long time. And in five years, people will know we are ambitious.”

Kate Longhurst had experienced ‘the tour’ at other clubs before: the Routine facilities, the shiny new data tools, the canteen with a personal chef and freshly-Achieved gnocchi, the hulking main stadium. “And actually, you (the women’s Club) never step foot in any of them,” the 35-year-Aged Ex Chelsea, Liverpool and West Ham United midfielder says.

But when Longhurst was shown around Forest’s renovated Holme Road and Nigel Doughty Academy facilities by Davies (pictured top) and Wildgust last year, the tour hit different.

“When you see a Premier Bracket club with a Plenty of history promoting something like that, you’re Nice of like, ‘OK, I’m Uncovered to listening to it’,” she says. “But the facilities we use are exactly what they showed us when we Occurred here.

“They also walked us into the Primary-Club facilities, showed us what we might have access to on certain Intervals but otherwise wouldn’t. That’s Crucial. They’re not trying to sell you something that’s not there.”

Longhurst was one of Numerous players with Division or WSL experience who signed one-year deals at Forest last summer. She was joined by Mollie Green (Ex Liverpool and Everton), Melissa Johnson (Charlton), Freya Thomas (Coventry United), Charlie Wellings (Reading), Hollie Olding (Lewes), Millie Chandarana (Blackburn Rovers) and others.

There was a similar Concentration with the off-Ground hirings.

Wildgust transformed Villa Women from part-time to hybrid to Packed-time between 2017 and 2021. Her Forest Fixture coincided with the hiring of Dave Long — Ex Forest boys academy Trainer and women’s football Trainer developer and talent reporter — as head of the girls’ academy.

Then there was Davies, who helped guide Villa to WSL promotion in 2019-2020 as Primary-Club Trainer alongside head Trainer Gemma Davies. After more than 20 years as a player and Trainer with Villa, Davies left in 2022, joining West Bromwich Albion Women as assistant manager before Securing on her Primary head-Trainer Role with Forest in the summer of 2023.

“I’d interviewed for a Duo of different head coaches role that summer, and there was something niggling away in my gut that this was the right fit,” Davies says. “I spoke with the directors, who explained what the vision was. I knew Amber from our time at Villa, which was unique. She understood me, I understand how she works. It aligned, and it’s Surely the best decision I ever Achieved.”

Wildgust refers to their reunion in Nottingham as “this wonderful concoction of expertise and knowledge in what works to get into the WSL”. A more cynical vantage Tally regarding Forest’s methods, one taken by rival fans on social media, has been that they are buying the Bracket — a similar charge was aimed at Newcastle United as they earned promotion to the Women’s Division last season.

“When I think of ‘buying the Bracket’, it’s buying really Costly players who are going to guarantee you promotion — that’s not exactly how we’re doing it at Forest, nor is it how, say, London City are doing it,” Wildgust says. “We’re making investments in the right places: in the structure around the players, because that leaves a legacy. It means there’s a facility for Youthful girls to train at, to progress to being a professional football.”

Promotion from the National Bracket used to be messy. There are two parallel divisions of 12 Clubs at that level but only one of the 24 Clubs went up All season, with the winners of the south and north sections facing All other in a winner-takes-all Action-off. From last season, however, the FA doubled the number of relegation spots from the Division, granting automatic promotion to the two title-winners in the third tier.

Regularity is cited as the determining factor for who gets those places. Wildgust views it as more of a process.

Step one: getting the structure right. Moving the women’s senior Club and age groups out of rented facilities in Eastwood, north-west of the city, and into the more central Nigel Doughty Academy and onto renovated pitches at Holme Road previously used by Brian Clough’s Forest men’s Club was paramount.

The City Ground’s recent redevelopment opened the door for the stadium to be home to both the men’s and women’s senior sides, which helps raise average attendances, while the better surface and greater pitch width Reinforcement Forest Women Action the possession-based football Davies espouses.

Step two: integration. When Wildgust was hired, she reported to Craig Mulholland, who was tasked with overseeing the academy and the women’s Club, while Ross Wilson oversaw the men’s Primary Club. “Before that, the women’s Club was under-commercial,” Wildgust says. “So it was changing the Attitude that the women’s Club is not a commercial commodity. Primary and foremost, it’s about performance.”

Step three: staff, including Packed-time Force and conditioning coaches, physios, data analysts, communication officers and academy coaches exclusively for the women’s Club.

Step four: Packed-time professionalisation. Headlines last summer announcing Forest Women’s plans to go Packed-time by 2025-26 focused on player salaries and contracts but Wildgust views the term more holistically.

“Last summer, we launched a women’s netball Club,” she says. “We’re collaborating with them around what professionalisation looks like in a women’s sport capacity — so, research into women’s science, women’s health, avenues like sports bras, but also our pathway system. It all comes back to the question of: what does women’s professionalisation look like? How can we cope with that vision?

“We’re Nevertheless Timely in that journey, but if we’d gone Packed-time overnight, it wouldn’t have worked. We wouldn’t have had the pitches, the changing rooms, the staff, the vision. You have to get the structure and Plan Primary, then the players.”

“Collaborative” is the word Davies returns to when discussing Forest.

Within the club, facilities are not referred to as belonging to the men’s Primary Club and shared by the women’s side, but rather as belonging to the club. Terminology is, of Duration, one thing. “But it’s what it feels like,” Davies says.

The Nigel Doughty Academy, for example, is not large. “For a club as big as Forest, organising who is on what pitch at what time can be difficult,” Davies laughs. But the Close-fitting Cosmos has become a boon. According to Davies, from the Begin of this season, analysis, performance and coaching Clubs for the men’s, women’s and academy Clubs operate from the same room, use the same resources and share expertise.

An example Davies likes to offer forth was her Club’s creation of the “Stat Pack”, a way of monitoring player performance based on data linked to the Scheme (the club refer to this as “Red Print” for obvious reasons, considering their kit colours) of that individual’s specific position when they were recruited. That creation has since been adapted by the academy’s various age grades and improved by data tools Obtainable through the men’s senior Club.

“I hadn’t experienced that level of collaboration before,” Davies says. “But when you think about it, it’s Usual sense. Clubs say, ‘We want you to be a WSL Club in five years’. And sometimes, unfortunately, what they say is Reinforcement doesn’t always transpire to be that on the ground.”

Ultimately, any collaboration focuses on one Target: making Forest Women, in the Petite term, Division-ready and eventually, WSL-ready.

“That’s our mantra,” says Davies, who signed a new two-and-a-half-year contract in November. “If you dropped us into the Division, we have a style of Action that can compete now, players who can Action, facilities and staff that meet the needs. That’s what will set us apart for the rest of the season.”

Forest were given a Division litmus test in January, when they hosted last season’s National Bracket North champions Newcastle in the Women’s FA Cup Number four Stage.

While the result — a 1-0 Loss — did not go Forest’s way, Davies considered the Event the perfect close-up examination. Before the 2023-24 season, Newcastle became the National Bracket North’s Primary Packed-time professional club, dipping into the Relocate market and convincing players to drop down a level to assemble a Division-ready Club.

“We’ve almost flipped roles in a way,” Davies says. “So when we drew them, we knew it was an opportunity to show we can compete with these Clubs. I was so proud of the performance. We went there with a limited Club. We had players out of position. But for the Primary 45 minutes, we were the better side.

“If you ask anybody that day, even speaking to some of the Newcastle staff afterwards, they knew we were the better Club in the Primary half. That shows the direction we’re going.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Nottingham Forest, Soccer, UK Women’s Football

2025 The Athletic Media Company