Charlotte Healy every word pre-Sunderland.

Charlotte Healy was back in front of the media today at the Robins High Performance Centre for her first pre-match press conference of the season.

Our head coach looked ahead to Sunday's trip to Sunderland to kick off the Women's Super League 2 campaign.

Here's everything she had to say…

Healy on Her Summer

Yeah I've had a good summer, thank you. A bit of time off and then just really busy planning. I think it was a good chance to reflect on the season and my first 12 months in charge and then an opportunity for us to identify areas we could build on. 

Healy on personal growth ahead of second season

I'm really excited for the season, I came in quite late last summer so there was a lot of work to do and we were almost starting from scratch, to be honest. For me, over the off season, it's been really nice to reflect, we're night and day away from where we were 12 months ago, in terms of the workforce from the performance and medical and technical perspective all the way through to the business side. 

When you go in as a head coach for the first time you have your ideas of how you want to play. I had to adapt and evolve and as the season went on I learned a hell of a lot last year. We got things right, and there's things that I reflect and I think, maybe we could have made a different decision or done things differently. That's natural when you're in a high performance environment. But I feel excited, that's probably the biggest feeling that I've got. We've done a lot of hard work over the summer. The players have worked incredibly hard, and I feel really aligned to the group. There's a real good feel around the group. Everybody here now wants to be here, there's more games than there's ever been. There's a lot of cup games before Christmas, so it was really important for us that we have players that want to put the team first and want to go and perform and I think we've got that. I'm really excited to see that come together and see the hard work that everyone's put in over pre-season. 

Healy on Sunderland

We have to make sure that we're ready and we have to focus on us. I think it will be a tough game,  going to the North East and playing on that pitch is always difficult for everybody, so for sure, it's a difficult start for us. We have to concentrate on us and our strengths and how we can hurt Sunderland ultimately. We know their players. We know who they've bought in and they've strengthened really well but there's still areas that we can exploit and we'll look to do that on Sunday.

Healy on Mercury 13

They've come on board and we've seen lots of changes off the pitch for sure. What's really important is people see investment and they think there's huge investment in the playing budget. Of course, there's been investment in the playing budget but I think one thing that has been a real positive for us is that it's been investment across the club as a whole. I think we've seen a huge increase in workforce across the business side of the football club in terms of bulking out: commercial, marketing, comms, sponsorship, all those things that are really important if we want to be a sustainable football club. So, there's been a lot of investment in building the business side of the football club to make sure that long-term we're set up for success and that's really exciting because we've got people in the building now who wake up every morning and their first thought is Bristol City Women. How can they help Bristol City Women be successful? That's a really exciting football club to be a part of, to be honest.

Target for the Season

We want to take the league all the way, I think it was the Durham game that we drew that ruled us out of promotion last season with, four or five games to go. We definitely want to be closer than that this season. We know other teams have had significant investment as well. I don't think that the league will change in terms of how competitive it is, it will be, as always, a real difficult league to be in. That's why, for us, I speak about the importance of consistency and performances. We just have to look after ourselves and concentrate on us. 

Healy on New Players & Culture

We needed to bring good people in. We needed to bring in players, you know, who are at a real professional level and I think we've done that. A lot of the players we've brought in won leagues last year or won cups, they won something. I think that mentality is really important for us to understand what it takes to win and when it gets tough, display what that resilience looks like and how we at times can turn one point into three and no points into one. Every point matters in this league and we have to make sure that we're at a certain performance level. And when we're not, we still find ways to make points. So, I'm really pleased with what we've done. I think we've moved the needle again and we have to continue to do that because ultimately this club wants to be a WSL club. 

Keeping Key Squad Members & Departures

Tying down the likes of Emily and Sophie is really important because they're a huge part of what we do, they were sought after, of course with the quality they have and the experience they have. So, for them to choose to remain part of our project shows that they believe in what we're doing. It shows we're ambitious, they're ambitious and we're aligned in where we want to get to. So that's really important. I think in terms of departures, look, of course, you always want to keep really good players, but we're really proud of that too. I think, when you're a WSL2 club, if you have a good season and in particular young players do well, of course, they're sought after by WSL1 club. So, from our point of view, we want to keep them, but you also can applaud them and wish them well because, one of the key strands of our success is that we provide young players opportunity and we support their development. 

Healy on Brooke Aspin returning

There's definitely a romantic part of her coming back and we also want role models from the South West for other players and young fans too. So absolutely, it's nice to have another player from the South West back with us but I think also we know the quality that Brooke can add to our squad. I think she's had a difficult few years with injuries, but her quality and her leadership skills are superb. She was somebody who we identified early that we thought would be a real positive signing for us and I think we've seen that already in pre-season, to be honest.

She's in a really good place and  I've no doubt we're going to get the best out of her. I've been so impressed with her as a person, to be honest, for even talking about her as a footballer. She's come back in. She works incredibly hard. She asks questions. She challenges. You know, she's worked hard to get herself fit, and we've seen some real good performances from her on the pitch, and real-world leadership skills as well. For somebody so young, she's got huge experiences, and I think our team will really benefit from those experiences. So, yeah, really pleased to have her here, and for sure, she's going to add to the quality of our group.

Healy on Goalscoring Threat

I think we've got a few players that can add goals. I think we'll see the best of Robbo this year. I think Lotta will come in and add goals, too, from that 10 position. Emily Syme, Rio Hardy and Maria Farrugia scored a lot of goals for us last year. Then you have the likes of Emma Bissell who also scored important goals for Charlton. I'm obviously going to have missed somebody out, but what's important for us when we recruit is that we want to make sure we have players that can score goals from different areas, and that's the conversation with the group today that we carry such a threat. We have to make sure that we're not one-dimensional because if somebody wants to nullify one area of our game, then we've got to make sure that we can hurt them with a different one, and I really think that with the threats that we've got and the quality that we've got from our attacking players, I think we can hurt teams in different ways, which, as a coach, is a real positive.

Healy on Marine Dafeur at WAFCON

I absolutely loved watching her she was fantastic. It was an incredible achievement for Algeria. We were really proud to see her go as far as they did, and I thought they were really unlucky, to be honest, not to make the final as well, so it's a huge achievement. We were really proud of her as a group, and to finish third at WAFCON and qualify for the World Cup is amazing for her, so she's really happy, and she's come back in a real good space, so hopefully she can continue those good performances for us this season.

Healy's Message to the Fans

I'm just really looking forward to seeing them again. It's been a long season.  I'm excited for them to see the new players we've brought in. I'm excited to see them travel again home and away, because I think Ashton Gate was like a fortress for us last season. We absolutely loved playing there. We've got a big game next Saturday against Newcastle, so I'm just excited for the fans to come down and see us for the first time if they're not travelling to Sunderland, and for the ones that are travelling to Sunderland, thank you very much. We know how much of a commitment that is. So, you know, we want to make sure we try and put a performance for them.