Aston Villa are considering the future of their women’s first-team manager, Robert de Pauw, the Guardian understands.
Following Sunday’s 4-0 defeat at Arsenal in the Women’s Super League, the Midlands club are ninth in the table and one point above the relegation zone. De Pauw has overseen one victory in his first nine league fixtures in English football.
According to multiple sources, senior staff at the club discussed De Pauw’s position on Tuesday and it is not yet certain whether he will remain in charge for Wednesday’s League Cup Group E fixture at home to the Championship side Charlton Athletic. Villa are second in the group behind Tottenham and still hold a strong chance of reaching the quarter-finals before Wednesday’s concluding group-stage fixtures.
It is also understood that De Pauw did not take the club’s usual training session on Tuesday. Aston Villa have been contacted by the Guardian for comment.
In the early hours of Wednesday, shortly after the Guardian broke news that De Pauw’s future was in doubt, the Dutchman posted a cryptic update on LinkedIn. De Pauw’s post made no reference to Villa but he wrote about “never shying away from difficult decisions” rather than trying to “win a popularity contest”, before posting a link to an article regarding his departure from Bayer Leverkusen.
De Pauw wrote: “As a football manager the hardest thing is the loads of daily choices you have to make. Short term, long term. Popular decisions, unpopular decisions. Weekly having to disappoint players because you can only play 11 and have to disappoint 14 others.
“You need the backing of the club if you want the team to go from average, to good, to better, to top. This reselecting and developing of a team is necessary thing to do to make these steps. I did this in Leverkusen the past two seasons selecting on football, behaviour and characteristics of the players. I never shy away from difficult decisions and I will certainly not win the popularity contests. Because you can never satisfy everyone. But always keeping standards high to get the best out of the team and each other.”
The 43-year-old has been in charge of Villa since June, when he signed a three-year deal with the option of a further year. He finished sixth in the Frauen-Bundesliga last season after a fifth-placed finish in the previous campaign.
Before that two-season spell in Germany he worked in the Netherlands as the manager of FC Twente, winning a domestic double in 2022, after a spell coaching within the Dutch national setup’s youth system.
De Pauw succeeded the former Aston Villa manager Carla Ward, who was at the helm for three years and oversaw ninth-, fifth- and seventh-placed finishes in those three campaigns.
