Watch now: Potter’s first interview as Palace Women Manager

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24 Jun 2025

Jo Potter says her array of experiences as both a trophy-winning manager, and successful England player, will be central to her coaching philosophy, as she takes the reins as Crystal Palace Women’s manager.

The 40-year-old has joined Palace after an impressive two-year spell in charge of Scottish Women's Premier League side Rangers, where she won the domestic cup double in both of her seasons in charge.

These follow a distinguished playing career which saw Potter win 35 caps for England, finishing third at the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup, and claim silverware at a number of top-level clubs including Birmingham and Arsenal.

Read on for Potter’s first Palace TV interview in full, including words on what brought her to the club, her immediate plans for the team, her coaching philosophy, and her message to the Palace Women’s supporters…

Welcome to Crystal Palace, Jo! How excited are you to be here?

I'm extremely excited. I'm extremely honoured to be able to come in, and try to hit the ground running.

What are your plans for your first couple of weeks?

It's full steam ahead really. I think it's about getting to know the people around the building, introducing myself to the players, having good conversations with the players, knowing the ins and outs and how things work.

It's really important to get a really good feel of the place that you're going to be working in, first and foremost, and the people that are around it. We want to make it a really nice environment to come in working day in, day out, knowing what the players need, knowing what my staff needs, knowing what we need to do to go on and make this season successful.

How will your experiences as a top-level player and manager help you going into this new role?

I've always coached. I've always had an aspiration to be a manager. I always wanted to make sure that I'd done my hard graft.

I wanted to make sure I'd got my experience while I was playing, did all my badges and coached, got my experience while I was a professional footballer. I thought that was really important.

I really still try to keep my ‘player head’ on me quite a bit, to know what the players are thinking and how they're feeling, what they maybe need, but the last couple of years have been great for me at Rangers, to really go and learn my trade, and learn what it takes to be at a really big football club that demands success, that demands you win trophies. I've really enjoyed my time at Rangers. I've got a lot to thank them for.

It’s a fresh start for me, a really big challenge at a really big club with some special players, and we're hoping that we can hit the ground running and continue that success hopefully.

What is it which attracted you to Crystal Palace, and which made you want to take this club forward?

Just having conversations with the people at the club. It was important that I know the ambitions of the club. I had a really good conversation with [Chairman] Steve [Parish] and about how important the women's team are to him and his aspirations.

You can just see that it's a real footballing club, which loves football, wants to do well, and have got real big ambitions for the club. With how well the men's team have done this year with the FA Cup success, you could see how much it meant to the club itself.

It's really important that we know where the women's game is at, we know where we're sitting at, and we know where we want to be.

It's a massive place to be right now. I think you could see how hard it is to sustain WSL status and how hard it is to get promoted, so we really want to make sure that we've got the network and the environment right to be able to get back to where this club deserves [to be], and really make it work because the infrastructure's here, the grounds are brilliant, the training facilities are brilliant, everything's there to be able to do it.

It's just making sure that we get everything right, make it sustainable and hopefully have a really bright future.

Tell us a little bit about yourself as a manager.

There's always a fine line of being a manager and being somebody there who can really help the players, but I think those relationships are massive for your day-in, day-out, and making sure that the players get what they need.

I'm always there. It's important that the players know that win, lose or draw, there's always a knock on the door and you can always come to me, and I'm always a human being first. I think that's key when you're in a team environment and you want to win.

So human being first, make sure that the players know that I'm always available should they need to come and speak to me, and I'm definitely a hands-on coach on the pitch. I love to be in and about it, and making sure that we're putting in the right intensity and the right work, definitely.

What do you look for from a team which you manage? What type of style or philosophy do you like to implement?

It's important to know that there are different ways to win, and adaptability is key for me.

Whoever we're playing against, we'll give them the utmost respect, but a lot of my philosophy is around us and what we look like and what we do really well, what we need to improve on. That's what we're going to do day-to-day, and it's really key that the players know that, the players buy into the way of playing.

I think the players have got to enjoy playing a certain way, so I'll be hoping to bring that intensity to it. That's one thing that I do like: an intense day-to-day environment, making sure that the games are easier than training.

I like to play with the ball, I like to possess the ball a lot, but I think there's a definite way to win and if that's making sure that we're utilising our pace, we're utilising our width or we're utilising our build-up play, then that's used for that game, and that's important to know because you're not just going to see one set style from me all season.

There are different ways to win, and I think we need to give the opposition some respect, so the players are going to learn a lot.

I think it's adaptability, playing a few different formations, making sure opponents can't really work us out, that's a key thing for us, and being able to adapt within games and mix up our game so we become unpredictable, and hopefully be able to bring the players along the way and learn a thing or two.

Finally, what’s your message to the incredible Crystal Palace Women’s fanbase?

The fans are going to be key to us. They’re going to be super important. You see what a difference they can make, and bring you that extra five, ten percent to every single game.

We want to see you turn up, we want to see you bring the noise, and we want to see you support the team because we're going to need it.

We're going to fight, and we're going to fight with you, and for you, so it's key to turn up every single week and give us your best.

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