Nottingham Forest: Women’s players to be put on ‘lucrative’ wages

With Reading, another club that played a division higher than Forest last season, hit by financial issues and forced to pull out of the Championship, Wildgust was asked if she felt the Reds were “bucking the trend” this summer with their decision to invest more in the women’s game.

“It’s really sad to hear the news of what is happening to other clubs, especially those that are more established,” she told BBC Radio Nottingham.

“Obviously that is not the case here for Nottingham Forest, we have a really supportive owner, we have backing from the resources we have internally and the club just wants to drive women’s sport forward.

“That is what we are here to do and that is why we want to make the women’s team full-time, so I do think we are bucking the trend but we shouldn’t be bucking the trend, it should just be the trend across women’s sport in general.”

Forest finished third in the National League Northern Premier Division table last season, having come within one win of promotion 12 months earlier, and Wildgust says the move toward professionalism has only raised confidence that the Reds can end their 13-year stay in the third tier and take a major step towards the top-flight.

“We want to achieve all our ambitions and we want to achieve our vision of being in the Women’s Super League,” she told BBC East Midlands Today.

“This is the first step to making that a reality.”