Eva Olid: ten weeks into the Manchester United job

Eva Olid has been Manchester United manager for 10 weeks after her surprise appointment at the start of August, joining the club a month before the Women's Super League season began, and she spoke to BBC Sport during a brief pause in a Manchester coffee shop.

Olid, 41, arrived from Hearts, where she managed from 2021-2026 and took the team from the bottom of the table to Scottish Premier League champions within five years; she began coaching at 26 and favours a possession-based approach with emphasis on building from the goalkeeper. "It's been good but really busy," Olid tells BBC Sport. "It's just been work, home, work, home." Relatively unknown south of the border, her first priority at United's Carrington training base was to explain her background and methods to the players: "My first day I showed them what I did in the past and who I was," she says. "I tried to be myself from second one. I showed that I'm a person before a coach."

Olid inherited a thin squad and a new policy prioritising academy players over signings while seeking to implement a more attacking style, a combination she acknowledged was a substantial challenge. United began her tenure with a 2-1 defeat at London City Lionesses and followed that with a 5-0 home loss to Chelsea. "It was a difficult week," she says. "There were honest conversations. I took responsibility for a lot of things. I think that was a good starting point for the players."

She says identifying problems allowed her to change course: "I was confident. It's crazy to say, I was confident because I knew what the problem was. And when you know the problem, you can change that." Olid described stripping things back after the Chelsea defeat and engaging in frank dialogue with her squad: "I spoke, they spoke, and we knew what we had to do."

A 1-1 draw at the Emirates began a five-game unbeaten run that has taken United from the bottom of the WSL to seventh. "That week was difficult - a lot of emotions - but going to Arsenal, we fought for each other, there was hard work. I think it was the perfect starting point for a good moment," she said.

Drawing on her own playing career as a defensive midfielder, Olid emphasises the basics and balance between results and development. "When you are in Manchester United, you need to find a way to win," she says. "It's a challenge - how you can win and at the same time develop players and at the same time implement a new style of play. You need to find the balance of all that together."

Off the pitch, Olid has had limited time to explore Manchester and is hunting for familiar comforts: "I have to say that the tapas... sorry, but some of the tapas bars are not 100% authentic," she says, adding that she had to search in Scotland before finding a good tapas bar. She admits: "I was not brave [enough] to drive here," and that she used buses in Scotland and needs to "find the ways to move by tram" in Manchester. She has visited Old Trafford twice, saying: "I came 13 years ago to a game - as a fan of football, and what I remember was amazing. On Saturday I went for second time and they showed me the changing rooms. The day that we play there this season, I will feel the happiest person in the world, like really like a dream."

Olid insists the task at United is to combine winning with player development and style, and she believes recent weeks have moved the team toward that objective: "And I think these last weeks, we got to that point."