It seemed that a new year has done little to reverse the stuttering fortunes of Tottenham Hotspur Women, who slumped to a 2-1 defeat at the hands of Aston Villa over the weekend at Walsall’s Poundland Bescot Stadium in the first Women’s Super League match of 2023.
While the defeat to Villa makes it five successive WSL defeats for Spurs, head coach Rehanne Skinner was in no mood for negativity and insisted on staying positive amid her side’s troubling run of form.
Speaking to SPURSPLAY via the club’s official website, Skinner pointed out the first positive from the match in spite of the defeat – Beth England opening the scoring on her debut following her recent move from Chelsea:
“We knew it was going to be a tough test,” said Skinner.
“We started the game not how we would want to but probably scored against the run of play really, but it was a really well worked goal in terms of Beth getting her first chance and scoring that. It’s a really positive start for her so we’re delighted for her with that.”
Skinner then continued to praise England and her goalscoring credentials, stating:
“She’s a proven goalscorer, it’s the reason she’s at the Club. She’s historically proven that in the WSL across a number of years so that experience and quality is going to come in really handy for us. We need to keep getting her minutes because she’s not played loads of minutes. This is just the start of things to come really.”
Skinner continued reflecting on the positives she took from the match, stating that, in spite of the final scoreline, she had seen a resilience to her side that had been lacking from them in previous matches:
“I thought that we started to change the momentum and it was definitely in our favour for a period of time. We didn’t capitalise in that moment to try to get ourselves back into it, but the biggest positive really is that I don’t think that we’ve showed enough of that fight towards the end of a game as what we have done today, so we showed a lot more resilience today and I’m pleased with that and we’ll definitely take that forward into the next game.”
Explaining why Amy Turner was withdrawn following a first-half injury, Skinner said:
“She didn’t feel great at all at the time. We’re looking into that in more detail but she was okay at half-time when I spoke to her. She felt a little bit better so hopefully it’s nothing to be worrying about.”
Skinner then discussed the impact that substitutes Celin Bizet and Eveliina Summanen, introduced for Chioma Ubogagu and So-hyun Cho respectively during the half-time interval in a bid to turn the tide back in Spurs’ favour, had on the match:
“I just think they’re really good players and we’ve had to manage their minutes a little bit but it was definitely an opportunity to change the way that we controlled the game in terms of possession and both are very good at doing that.
“Immediately, they had an impact in the second half, so it’s really positive in terms of their contributions. We just need to keep getting players back in from injuries that helps us to have more options to keep changing the bench. I thought they did really well when they came on.”
Have your say on Spurs’ WSL troubles in the Vital Spurs fan forum here.