“It is a bit like being in the congregation at your own funeral,” Nick Cushing said as he reflected on his long Manchester City goodbye. The manager leaves for the MLS side New York City after Sunday’s Women’s Super League game at home to title rivals Arsenal and the praise has come thick and fast.

“I don’t want to big him up too much because he might listen to this,” Jill Scott said with a grin, “but I do actually think he is a genius when it comes to football. I really do. The way you can see his mind working, the way he sees things and changes things on the spot; it’s not easy to do and he’s definitely someone I look up to as a coach.”

Arsenal’s Kim Little looks to union to keep change in right direction | Suzanne Wrack Read more

Georgia Stanway, recruited by Cushing from Blackburn’s academy at 16, is similarly effusive. “He’s definitely out and out the best manager I’ve had,” she said. “His technical detail, his tactical detail, is ridiculous. It’s crazy how we’re able to get one up on an opponent halfway through a game. He’s so quick in the way he thinks.”

Cushing seems genuinely humbled. “It’s really nice to hear people say nice things. It’s strange because I’m not trying to sensationalise … I just felt like I’ve done my job.

“The one thing that has made me really smile is over the last three years is I’ve been asked if I feel I’m blocking paths for female coaches, and now I’ve left I’m being told I have left the women’s game to go to the men’s game because I feel it’s better. So you can’t win either way, but I’ve enjoyed it, I would definitely come back and work in women’s football.”

He appreciates the environment he has worked in at City. “Ultimately, when I look at what we have done it’s been pretty simple,” the 35-year-old said. “All it took was that the staff didn’t have a negative perception of the girls in the women’s game.

“Now I go over to HQ and we use all the different departments of the business. Those people are proud of the success of the women’s team. When I look at maybe teams not training at their facility or playing on different grounds, I just think it’s crazy. Not crazy, but I see how simple it was for us and I don’t see why that doesn’t happen at other clubs.

“Every time it has happened at another club it has made our job of winning really difficult because that team has become so much better. For the game it has been so much better because it has been a lot more competitive.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nick Cushing proudly holds aloft the FA Cup won by his Manchester City team in 2017. Photograph: Adam Davy/PA

Cushing, asked whether it was time the Premier League took over the WSL, went broader. “To me, it’s irrelevant what organisation runs the women’s game as long as the right decisions are made,” he says. “I don’t ever think we’d be waiting for the Carabao Cup final [venue announcement] until four or five weeks before – it would never happen. So I don’t understand why it happens in the women’s game.

“I don’t know what the answer is, but if somebody’s saying to me that the Premier League would run it better, I think we’d all go for that. But it’s the same if someone said to me Kellogg’s would run it better, I’d go for that, really.

“We’re still debating now when the season’s going to start next year. And I’m like: ‘How are we supposed to plan a pre-season with this?’ It’s so difficult.”

Would these issues make him think twice about a return to women’s football? “No,” he said emphatically, before adding with a laugh: “I think I’m probably going to go to MLS and find a million and one issues with that.”

His final Academy Stadium game is likely to be emotional, albeit tempered slightly should Arsenal beat City for the second time in five days. Which is why he said the message to his players will not be to do it for him.

“We’ll end up going out far too emotional and too illogical. We’ve got to go out and play a game of football that is two of the best teams in the league in England fighting for a title and three very important points.”