“You start looking over your shoulder. You think, do things come in threes? What else is going to happen?”

Scotland and Aston Villa defender Rachel Corsie has been reflecting on a “very hard week” in which both her national team and club managers were sacked.

Pedro Martinez Losa paid the price for Scotland’s failure to qualify for Euro 2025 when he was dismissed on 13 December, two days after Robert de Pauw left Villa following a six-month spell in charge.

“It has felt a very hard week. As a player you just have to go into that mode, we [Villa] also had midweek fixtures last week,” said Corsie on the BBC’s Behind the Goals podcast.

“You just have to rally and galvanise the players together. Being apart from Scotland, you touch base with as many people as you can or that have reached out to you.

“From a club perspective you’re a little more in the thick of it, so it’s been a difficult week with people losing their job around Christmas time. Any time is bad but [especially] around this time when you’re building into a Christmas break.

“The [Villa] team managed to get a win on Wednesday night and a win on Sunday which has just slightly helped some of those heavy feelings.

“It’s not been a nice week for me personally. As a player, in a tough way you almost have to put those emotions to the side.”

Corsie has yet to make her playing comeback after knee surgery in early October.

She added: “With me being out injured it’s helped me fulfil that role of trying to keep the players all together and just focus on the task ahead because I’m not in the emotional ups and downs of team selection and playing in the games where we’ve not had the results we would have liked to have had.

“I’ve tried to be that support, and the players have dealt with it really well.”