A-League Women: Perth Glory coach Alex Epakis says he has been given assurance he will return next season

Perth Glory women’s coach Alex Epakis is not worried about his future and says he has been given assurances he will continue at the helm despite his side’s significant decline this season. While Epakis admitted his disappointment at missing out on the A-League Women’s finals again in his fourth season in charge, he said he was proud of the squad’s effort despite ending the season on a 12-game winless run. Perth looked to be heading towards a first finals appearance since 2019 when they won five of their first seven games - including a 3-1 win away over eventual premiers Melbourne City - to soar to the top of the table. But they won just one of their remaining 15 games and ended the season in 10th spot - and would have finished 11th had it not been for an injury-time strike to teenager Tanika Lala in their 2-1 loss to City at Macedonia Park on Sunday. Glory did not win a match in 2024, with their last win coming on New Year’s Eve, and drew just four of their last 12 games, scoring only nine goals in their final dozen matches. But Epakis said he did not fear for his future and when asked whether he had been given assurances he would be with the club next season, said “yes” and that the club would undergo an extensive off-season review. “Ultimately, a number of discussions between myself, the club and (director of football) Stan (Lazaridis) about what it can look like going forward, they’ve already taken place,” he said. “That’s really important because we want to be a team that’s competing in the six consistently and we fell a bit shorter that this season. We need to improve in a number of departments in order to make that jump in that leap.” Epakis said the review would assess why their season petered out over their strong start, but admitted aspects of their slide down the ladder had been within their control. “You can look at a few items there which have allowed us to finish in the position we have and some of them, it’s certainly in our control, there’s no doubt about it,” he said. “But as a whole and as a club, we’re very well aware that we can and we should be competing for more. We’ve got the capacity to do more and we need to push for more. “That’s going to be the process over the next couple of months just to highlight and fix some of those things which unfortunately weren’t done at a high enough level consistently over the course of the season.” With a long off-season now waiting, Epakis said the squad would continue to train until early May, but there would be discussions with some players around an early release to play in NPL competitions around the country. He also threw his support around a prospective girls academy, mirroring the men’s set-up, which he pointed out many other of their rival A-League clubs had. “Something like that is necessary, to have (Football West’s) National Training Centre, the NPL plus a third program potentially run by us,” he said. “To have three pathways all interlinked, and all collaborating to produce players - West Australians - for Perth Glory is utopia.”