‘It has exceeded my expectations’: Aoife Mannion is already loving her time at Newcastle

When Aoife Mannion left Manchester United this summer, the 29-year-old’s move to a club in the second-tier came as something of a surprise. After all, her high-calibre CV lists being named twice in the Women’s Super League’s team of the season, she is a Champions League semi-finalist and has played in the past three Women’s FA Cup finals.

But there is no doubt in her mind that almost exactly two months to the day since Newcastle announced her arrival, that she has no regrets. “I feel like I’ve made an amazing move,” she says. “It was just where my heart wanted to go.

“It’s a massive club, that’s clearly on a journey. [There has been] a big injection of resource and infrastructure, support and staffing with an expectation of really pushing to get promoted and, to be fair to the team, they’ve done an amazing job these past few years. I’m just hoping I can be part of it. It has exceeded my expectations.

“When it came to an instinct and what decision I was going to make, the league [WSL 2] wasn’t as much of a sticking point than maybe people might have expected it to be. We’ve had two games so far – the quality has been really high. This league now has a [former] PFA player of the year, Ji So-yun, at Birmingham and at Newcastle, a World Cup winner in Morgan Gautrat and then Jordan Nobbs – it’s a league that is getting the respect that it’s due.”

Gautrat has arrived on loan from Orlando Pride, Nobbs from Aston Villa and along with Mannion they are eye-catching additions to Becky Langley’s squad. With an extra promotion spot up for grabs as a one-off, Mannion could be forgiven for being bullish, that this is Newcastle’s year. Yet her outlookis much more measured.

“I find myself sometimes cringing when I listen to people say: ‘Oh, we want to win at the end of the league’,” she says. “It feels foreboding, in a negative way. My personal style is to have these hopes and acknowledge what they are and that we all want to be in the mix. We all want to win leagues. We all want to win cups. But I don’t think you necessarily have to say it so on the nose. It’s not boxing.”

Mannion did win the FA Cup with Manchester United 16 months ago, beating Tottenham at Wembley, and she has plenty of good things to say about her four “amazing, rollercoaster years” at United “Manchester United gives you a little bit of everything, high energy and high passion from the fans, which brings massive expectations and I hadn’t experienced that before,” she says.

“Playing around really, really top-calibre players – that’s been a privilege. I know the girls and the staff will keep kicking on to take that to the next level and they have all of my best wishes.”

On Sunday, Mannion will face another of her former clubs. Newcastle travel to Birmingham and she is awestruck by how the women’s game is almost unrecognisable from when she joined them 12 years ago. Then aged 17, Mannion did not have an agent when she signed for the club she supported from Aston Villa. Her income from the game being “the equivalent of probably doing a few paper runs a week”. “It’s evolved beyond recognition. It’s still called football, but beyond that everything else is different.

“I didn’t follow a gym programme, for example, when I was first at Birmingham. Now it’s just massively different. As you get older and more mature, you can appreciate that for what it is. Women’s football has just grown so many legs and that makes it more entertaining for everyone. But it also makes it much more stressful to manage as a player.”

She may well be a Birmingham supporter, but Mannion has been in the sport long enough to know that will have no bearing on Sunday. “It’s amazing to see Birmingham making really exciting signings. But I live football in a way that everything is quite professional. That I am a fan originally doesn’t really affect me – it’s a game we’re really looking forward to.”

Both teams have four points from their opening two matches – with Newcastle opening with a victory at Nottingham Forest before a home draw against Sheffield United – and both have well-respected, young female head coaches, in Birmingham’s case, Amy Merricks.

Mannion has been taking the Uefa A Licence coaching course over the past year. “I’ve really, really enjoyed it and I’m hoping when I get a bit more settled in here I can get down to the under-16s and the 21s like I did at Manchester United and doing a little bit of coaching, helping out what will be the next generation.”

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