Forest Green will target ‘progressive’ manager

FOREST Green chairman Dale Vince says he could appoint a female head coach to succeed Mark Cooper.

Rovers sacked Cooper, 52, on Sunday after four consecutive defeats saw them drop to sixth in League Two.

“I think we’ll take a new direction in our recruitment. Maybe we’ll break some new ground,” Vince told BBC Points West. “We’ll recruit the kind of person perhaps that hasn’t been recruited before to be a head coach.”

Asked if he was hinting at appointing a female, Vince replied: “I don’t want to hint, but it could be. It is missing in men’s football, but so are BAME [Black, Asian and minority ethnic] head coaches. Everything’s possible with us, because we don’t come at this in any preconceived way or in a way it has always been done.”

Cooper, pictured, was appointed by the Nailsworth club in May 2016, and led them to promotion from the National League in his first full season in charge. But, following a sixmatch winless run which has seen them drop to five points adrift of the automatic promotion places, under18s boss Jimmy Ball has been placed in interim charge at The innocent New Lawn until the end of the campaign.

Rovers chairman Vince, 59, said that he had some “very interesting” applications among 70 CVs he had received by yesterday lunchtime.

“We’re very excited about the kind of people knocking on our door,” he added. “We’ll be looking for a progressive and more modern approach to the game. We’ll be looking for somebody that really fits the football philosophy we have as a club.”

Vince has taken an innovative