West Ham Women vs Aston Villa Women is live on Sky Sports Premier League from 11 am; kick-off 11.30 am.
To use a cliche, it has been one incredible football journey for West Ham Women manager Olli Harder. He has worked in his native New Zealand, the USA, China and Norway before returning to the UK – where he has also coached previously – to take over the managerial reigns in East London.
“I’m a Kiwi so I just got with the flow,” Harder explained ahead of Saturday’s game against Aston Villa Women,
“They’re just things that happened, I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve been able to finish one chapter and open another chapter. Some of these things are a little bit planned out but also things can happen quite quickly, you know how football is, it’s certainly not a sport you want to plan in too much because things change very quickly.
“I think because I’ve got such an open mindset about these things, it’s just allowed me to say ‘OK this chapter is closed or I’ve decided to close this chapter’ and then I’d like to go somewhere else and not really having any fear to do that.
“There’s no consideration like ‘oh well I don’t speak this language or what’s the culture like’, but just ‘this sounds cool so let’s go and do it’. My worst-case scenario is to go back to New Zealand, but that’s not terrible, it could be lot worse.”