Remi Allen may seem like a young head coach at 33 having hung up her playing boots at the end of last season, but her appointment at Southampton is a hard-earned opportunity she was working towards throughout her career. Ever since she began coaching in Leicester’s youth setup as a teenager more than 15 years ago, Allen has been putting in the hard yards.
She took on coaching roles at every club she played for, her pandemic-hit second spell at Leicester the only time in her career when she was not coaching as well as playing. When the moment came she was nearly 8,000 miles from home.
Allen was on honeymoon in Bali with her wife, Carly Davies, the Nottingham Forest head coach, and about to head out for dinner when she got the news she had landed the job at the Championship side, prompting “a little extra glass of wine” on that particular evening.
Since taking the reins in July, she has been embracing the “whirlwind” of relocating, switching between a mixture of hotels and Airbnbs while searching for a place to live and revelling in the excellent facilities at the club’s Staplewood training ground.
“I give huge thanks to Southampton for believing in me,” she says. “People probably look at it and say I was a player and now all of a sudden I’m a head coach, but a hell of a lot of groundwork went on,” she says.
“When I was first at Leicester, I was captain of the senior side then and Rehanne Skinner [now at West Ham] was the manager and she was the one who made me realise I had a passion for coaching. She said: ‘Come down to the under-10s in the RTC [Regional Talent Club].’
“I’m really proud of my journey. I’ve experienced every age group, not just working at top levels. I’ve also done a lot of analysis work along the way, always doing bits away from the sidelines to prepare myself for when I decided to retire.”
Her playing career included numerous top-flight spells at clubs including Aston Villa and Reading as well as two stints with Birmingham, with whom she reached the semi-finals of the Champions League, Allen was known for being a tenacious midfielder or, as she puts it, jokingly: “a nasty aggressive player – I know you’re thinking it – so there might be that bit of an edge to us,” she says when discussing the attractive, passing football style she is keen to adopt. Only a handful of players have made more WSL appearances.
Most recently, Allen was in short-term charge of the Championship side London City Lionesses at the end of last season, winning her first three matches, receiving a manager of the month award and steering them comfortably clear of relegation. She says she is “hugely grateful” for that opportunity.
Last season, initially while playing in the Championship for Birmingham, she was also on the staff of the England Under-23s coaching team as part of the FA’s elite coach programme designed to help develop female coaches.
In the WSL and Championship, seven clubs recruited first-team managers/head coaches this summer and Allen was the only British woman appointed. All four of the new WSL managers are from overseas and eight of the division’s 12 managers are male, three of those being British.
There are two British women managing in the top tier, Skinner and Crystal Palace’s Laura Kaminski, as the majority of WSL clubs appear to lean ever more towards hiring foreign coaches. It is a different picture in the 11-club Championship, where female head coaches are in a slight majority of six, all British.
Within those six, Allen is one of four aged 35 or under, along with Bristol City’s Lauren Smith, promoted Newcastle’s Becky Langley and Birmingham’s Amy Merricks. Allen feels that is important for the future. “It’s not about just being female or English and ‘You should get a job’ – absolutely not,” she says.
“You have to be good enough to do it. But I’ve worked with some unbelievable English coaches and I do think they get overlooked at times. For us to grow the women’s game, we have to invest in our female coaches.
“It’s absolutely massive to try to push that and for clubs to buy into that. That’s something Southampton have done. I owe a lot to them and I really will be doing everything I possibly can to try to repay them.”
Southampton’s “coaches of tomorrow” scheme has been funding free coaching qualifications for grassroots women and girls. At senior level the former England great Marieanne Spacey-Cale had been in charge for six years, guiding the club up the pyramid, before she moved upstairs in April and ultimately recruited Allen. Spacey-Cale’s successful tenure means Allen has taken over a side that finished fourth last season, seven points off the sole promotion spot, with 13 wins out of 22.
“It’s an exciting time to be around Southampton,” Allen says. “We want to push on, evolve and develop. It’s a club I always admired when I was a player. They’ve done things the right way: slow but steady progress. I felt that our values and morals aligned, so it felt like the perfect move for me. I’m really excited to meet the fans.
“The Championship this season, it’s possibly going to be the most competitive it’s ever been, but that’s how we want it. That’s incredible for women’s football. It’s no fun if one team is winning it [easily] and everyone is below that. There are probably five or six teams saying they’re going to try to push for promotion.”
