New Aberdeen FC Women’s manager Scott Booth hopes his arrival at Cormack Park can bring some stability to the side.
It has been a tumultuous summer for the women’s side, with former manager Colin Bell departing the club after just two league matches in charge.
Interim coaches have taken the squad for the past two months but the arrival of former Dons striker Booth, who boasts a wealth of managerial experience in women’s football, heralds a fresh start for the side.
Booth, who started work at Cormack Park on Wednesday, has made a long-term commitment to the club by signing a four-year contract and he hopes his arrival can help bring some continuity and routine.
The new Dons manager said: “We need to keep moving forward and the players know that. But I think they’re up for it.
“They’ve got a lot of desire and it just shows. They’ve come through such a tricky period for them where there has been a lot of changes for them and now there’s another change with me coming in.
“We’ll change the schedule a little bit so that’s another change, but this time it will be a change that will be there in place for the foreseeable future so that they know there’s a structure there and they can rely on it.”
Return to the Dons proved hard to resist for Booth
Booth, who won the SWPL title five years running from 2014 to 2019 with Glasgow City, had only recently returned to the club’s coaching staff as an assistant when Aberdeen made their approach.
The 52-year-old had much to ponder when the Dons came calling but the chance to oversee a long-term project at Aberdeen has proven impossible to resist.
He said: “I wouldn’t say it was a no brainer. I think obviously it’s a massive pull to come back to Aberdeen.
“The difficulty was that I’d just gone back to Glasgow City. They’re a great club, with great people and I got to know the squad really well.
“They welcomed me back there with open arms and I felt a large degree of loyalty towards them so that was the difficulty.
“But when I weighed everything up it was the decision that I felt I had to make.
“I knew that the facility here was good and that the women’s side is a project.
“I’ve been through that with Glasgow City going from amateur to hybrid to fully professional. I’ve done that.
“So that was something that I had been through before and I enjoyed that.
“It’s really difficult, it’s not easy to take a side like a women’s club to professional level from where we are at the moment because there’s a lot of factors involved in it.
“But the club have been amazing. They’ve got a project that they put to me that they want me to help deliver.”
‘Full-time football must be sustainable’
The ultimate aim is for the women’s team to become a full-time professional operation like their male counterparts.
But Booth, having been part of a similar transformation at Glasgow City, knows the building blocks, and finance, needs to be there for the move to be a successful one.
He said: “We want to make sure that the players have everything they need, and the club are really ambitious on the women’s side.
“I think it’s important to say this doesn’t come without a lot of hard work from the club, from the players and from the staff.
“The whole purpose is to see if we can navigate, obviously sustainably, to make it work properly for the women’s programme.
“But it also has to work for the players so that there’s continuity and safety there for them when they do go professional or we do bring in pro players.
“It is a case of we’ll do it when it’s sustainable and we’ll do it in the right way.
“I hope I’m here for at least four years, that’s my contract. But the plan is that within the next couple of years that we start to move closer to that sort of pro schedule.”
SWPL survival the priority for new women’s manager
The long-term goal is full-time football but the immediate aim to ensure SWPL1 survival.
League reconstruction means the top flight will be reduced from a 12-team league to a 10-club division next season and as a result the bottom three sides will be relegated.
The Dons are currently in ninth place, one point above the drop zone, after the opening 10 matches of the season.
Booth said: “It’s a tough situation, there’s no denying it, with three clubs going down. It’s unheard of really.
“The squad have done really well to win a few important games and I think that a lot of that as well has been down to the hard work done by the staff who have been filling in over that period when the club’s been looking for a new head coach.
“They’ve worked really, really hard behind the scenes to make the situation as easy as they can for the players in a difficult scenario.
“Starting off with a three-game week is quite tough. But the players are up for it. We’ve got a tough first game against Hibs. I know their head coach really well. We know how Hibs play, they’re a really good side.
“It’s going to be a tough game and then you follow that with Motherwell in midweek, which again is 100% another tough game.
“They’re going to come thick and fast. I think that’s the way the players want it. But we need to try and find some sort of momentum and continuity.”
Dons boss will look to add experience
Booth knows the rest of the campaign will be a challenging one.
But he hopes he can bring some experience to help the young squad when the transfer window opens in January.
The Dons manager said: “We’ve got the window in January and we will look to use that. I hope we can strengthen the squad and it will be an important stage to strengthen the squad.
“We’ve got some really good players, some really good talent. The majority are young players. We’ve got enough experience as well but we may need to try and just bring in a little bit more.
“At some point in January we’d like some players that have been through it and done it a little bit to help the ones who are here.”
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