BRADFORD City Women chairman, Qasim Akhtar believes the club made the “right” call in appointing their new manager.

After whittling down candidates from an extensive interviewing process, last week the Bantams confirmed former Ossett United Women boss, Emily Senior as the person to take the club forward.

The 29-year-old has already overseen her first fixture in the Bradford dugout, with City falling to a 3-2 defeat in the North East Regional Women’s Football League at Sunderland West End Ladies last weekend.

The Bantams’ last appointment of Nick Buxton who only lasted three fixtures of this current season was a disappointment, and Akhtar will be hoping to have much more success with his latest recruit.

Discussing the arrival of Senior as the club’s new manager, the Bradford chairman said: “We went through an extensive interview process having had a very decent number of applicants in the first place, which was nice to see. Emily made the final two.

“After doing due diligence on the pair of them, everything that we heard from Emily in the interview and in conversations after the interview were all extremely positive. Her ideas and our ideas with how we want to take the club forward were perfectly aligned. Myself, Gareth Davis and Danny Forrest (Thackley manager) conducted the interviews and it was about being as transparent as we could, as we wanted to show the candidates what this football club is all about.

“So, it was important that whoever came through the door understood exactly who we are and what we do. We’ve got a three, five and seven-year plan here, so it wasn’t all about hiring someone who was going to come in and change things up immediately. We wanted someone with the same ideas as us moving forward, and someone who could bring their own identity to not just the playing group, but the club as a whole.

“It was vital that we got this appointment right and I believe we have done that.”

Akhtar went on to highlight Senior’s strengths, and picked out a couple of qualities that helped her to stand out from the rest of the other candidates.

He said: “I think what stood out to us when interviewing Emily was two things. The first one was that she is hungry to learn. In this sport, we are all constantly learning and her desire to learn and improve as a coach was so evident for us to see. She’s one of ten FA Mentees in the country, so she’s always out and about at different football clubs learning.

“The second thing that stood out to us was that Emily had such a great understanding of the leagues in and around our current division. She has a great network of contacts around these divisions too, which is always important when you’re trying to navigate your way up the leagues each year.”

Ahead of today's County Cup tie with Silsden, a competition that Akhtar wants to try and win, he admitted that the goal for the league will remain the same, which, of course, is promotion for the Bantams.

He said: “We’ve never underestimated this league. Teams at both end of the table are picking up points from each other, so it’s very unpredictable but there remains a lot of games left.

“We have got a new manager, but we won’t be moving away from our promotion goals. However, there is a process that we need to follow, so in our eyes promotion is a success, but if we don’t achieve that then it won’t be deemed as a failure. There are different ways to look at things.”