Photograph: Neville Williams/Aston Villa FC/Getty Images Jordan Nobbs opted to move to Aston Villa to secure regular football. It was a position filled with distinction by Fran Kirby during England’s Euro 2022 triumph but Kirby’s serious knee injury has opened the door for a Lioness who cut her footballing teeth playing alongside Lucy Bronze, Steph Houghton, Lucy Staniforth, Jill Scott, Carly Telford, Demi Stokes and company at Sunderland. Very much an attacking playmaker these days, Nobbs is adept at drifting between the lines and looks eminently capable of occupying the Lionesses’ No 10 role, linking midfield to attack. In relocating to the West Midlands, she certainly seems to have rejuvenated the subtle, nuanced, game much missed by the Lionesses at the last two World Cups. Nobbs Sr, the head of Hartlepool’s community foundation, was routinely described as “hard as nails” and it seems his daughter has inherited similar resilience. It was a move fully endorsed by her father Keith, a former Hartlepool United defender, still famed locally for declining to be substituted in a derby against Darlington despite losing six teeth in an aerial collision. I knew with regular game time I could get back to my best.” “But I had to do everything possible to be selected for a major tournament and I needed regular game time. “There were a lot of tears it was difficult to leave a club I loved and owe a lot to,” she says. “It was a risk to a certain extent but with the limited game time I was getting, I had nothing to lose,” she says.Īlthough Nobbs was born in Stockton and her accent remains pure Teesside, she spent 13 years at Arsenal, playing every midfield role, and, despite losing her first-team place, felt an adopted Londoner. Nobbs is almost certainly in Australia now only thanks to her calculated gamble in swapping Arsenal for upwardly-mobile Villa last January.

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