Oxford United Women general manager on recruiting full-time boss

The U’s have been looking for a new manager since Liam Gilbert left the club in August, to take the hot seat at Women’s Championship outfit Reading.

Gilbert celebrated five years with United in the summer and almost led the club to promotion last season.

Since his exit, development squad manager George Anthony, and then more recently head of goalkeeping Shaun Green, have taken charge of the U’s.

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After initially seeking a replacement for Gilbert in a part-time capacity, United are now set to hire for the role on a full-time basis.

General manager Sims, who takes care of the day-to-day running of the women’s team, said: “We knew a full-time manager was something that we needed to do, it was just a matter of time.

“It was probably going to happen next year, but with going through the process of searching for the new manager, we spoke about it again as a group and decided it was the right time now, just to help us find that right person and really bring us forward.

“It’s giving someone that opportunity to have the time to really put their plans into place.

“To do this job on a part-time basis, we’ve all agreed is pretty much impossible because you want to drive the club forward and want players to get better, but to have that extra time is really going to help us push forward.”

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Addressing the length of time it has taken to replace Gilbert, Sims said: “We’re going to make sure we get the right person to appoint. We had some strong candidates, but they just weren’t that person.

“I didn’t want to make an appointment for the sake of making an appointment.

“I know time has gone on, and we want to try and find someone, but I’m really confident now that it’s a full-time role, it’ll open up another pool of hopefully higher calibre candidates that we can choose from.”

Sims also reserved praise for Anthony, in how he handled the challenge of leading the side immediately after Gilbert’s departure.

“George was very quickly thrown into it because he’d come up from the development team after a really successful season last year,” she said.

“The next part for him was to be assistant to someone he could learn from in that more competitive environment.

“He was chucked into it and did a fantastic job. He was so calm and composed.”

After a free weekend, the U’s return to action on Sunday when they make the trip to Southern Premier Division’s bottom side London Bees.