EXCLUSIVE: Doing the maths – Emily Syme of Bristol City on goals, assists and accountancy

Emily Syme is in a fine run of form at the moment – nominated for WSL2 Player of the Month and Goal of the Month in December.

And her momentum wasn’t disrupted by the winter break.

She’s helped her Bristol City side to the fifth round of the Women’s FA Cup – scoring twice against Southampton to seal a 2-1 win over Southampton after extra time, and setting up a meeting with Arsenal.

And this weekend they return to league action in WSL2 as they face bottom-of-the-table Ipswich Town.

“I’ve started playing a little bit higher up the pitch, which obviously is a slight change from last year – it was more predominantly in the 10 or even deeper in the four or six last year,” she tells SheKicks.net. “So I’ve gone a bit higher up, and I’m starting to find a really nice bit of form.

“I started the season, I guess, a bit slower. Now I’ve started to kind of score goals and build some confidence. And yeah, [I hope] more and more assists and goals keep coming.”

“Bristol City are ambitious”

The Robins are in an exciting new era. They are in their first season under new head coach Charlotte Healy, and have enjoyed seven wins out of their 12 league matches so far.

“It’s been a very, very close league this year, more than any league so far,” says Syme, players’ player of the season last time round, and who progressed through the Bristol City academy and returned to the club in 2022 after spells elsewhere. “Our aim was to hit Christmas in a competitive place where we could compete in the second half of the season.

“We had a lot of changes at the start of the year – even the team that started that first game back against Birmingham, the amount of changes that have come from last year, on top of that,a new head coach, a lot of new staff coming in, a lot of change.

“For us, being third at Christmas and being in a position where we’re close to the top two and trying to [pull] away from those behind us is an ideal position for us to kick on for the rest of the season.”

And the ambition of Healy and her players is matched by Bristol City’s new ownership, the Mercury13 consortium – which is something that excites Syme.

“I’ve been at the club for a long, time and I’ve seen it through all its different phases and stages. and training at different training grounds, training on worst pitches. We have such a high quality of facility now and we’re getting another boost.

“Bristol has always been a very developmental club. It’s always been a club that’s really focused on people and culture and bringing through young players. I think this new ambition says we’re going to develop these young players, we’re going to keep the same things that are really important to us, we’re going to keep the people, we’re going to keep the feel of the club – but we’re going to harness this and we’re going to kick on and we’re going to be a WSL team that is competing with lots of people.

“And for me, that’s a level of ambition that I’ve not seen from Bristol before. They’ve obviously been in WSL and in and around it, but keeping up with the growth of the women’s game at the moment is a big challenge for all clubs that want to be part of that.

“The thing that I’m most excited for is that we now have the resources to compete and fulfil the dreams and ambitions that this club has always had but struggled to actually put into play.”

Emily Syme: Working in accountancy gives me a change of environment

Syme never expected to have the chance to be a full-time footballer, and pursued a mathematics degree; indeed, she still works one day per week as a client services associate in a local accountancy firm.

“I’ve always been someone that gets maths. That’s luckily something that’s always clicked for me, so to keep that side is very important. But as the ambition of the club grows, it becomes more of a reality that [football] can be something that I do standalone for a lot of years – but I’m still keen to keep the other things alongside because football is unknown and a lot can change and anything can happen.”

She goes on: “[Accountancy] gives me a change of environment. It gives me something else in my brain to think about. It gives me more skills to add to my bow. But I’m very keen that the football is very much the priority.

“To go and speak to other people [in the office], it gives me that headspace that I need that actually helps me to perform better at the weekends.”