“We have to improve what we are doing as our identity” – Robert Vilahamn previews Aston Villa cup clash
Tottenham Hotspur will be looking to exorcise the demons of last week’s 3-0 North London Derby hammering defeat to Arsenal when they take a break from WSL action to play Aston Villa in the Women’s League Cup on Saturday afternoon.
It’s the second game they play of three in the group stage of the competition. Their first game was away against Charlton which Spurs won 2-1 back in September thanks to a late Jessica Naz winner. Their final group game will be away against Crystal Palace in mid-December.
It will be a close-fought game as Tottenham are only one place, and one point, above the Villains in the WSL table, having won one game more, scoring three more goals but conceding nine more, 21 in total which is the leakiest defence in the WSL.
They have similar records, and when the two teams met back in September, it ended in a 2-2 draw with a last-minute equaliser from captain Bethany England needed to spare Robert Vilahamn’s blushes.
Team News
Luana Buhler, Tottenham’s Swiss defender will miss the next few weeks after suffering a knock in the game against Arsenal.
English midfielder Drew Spence won’t be available either as she’s recovering from an illness.
Maite Oroz has started to warm up and train with the team. She’s taking steps to return to first team action, but Vilahamn said she’s still “a few weeks” away from playing again.
Vilahamn said of Oroz that she’s “one of those who are most suitable to play the way we wanna play. If you don’t have her, another one will play, and it might affect the outcome.”
Oroz’s injury in October came at a bad time for Spurs, having arrived in the summer from Real Madrid. She played in every game until suffering that injury and, as per Vilahamn’s admission, the way the team plays has been disrupted by her absence.
Addressing the bad form
Having conceded seven goals in their last two games, improving the defence will be a key priority for Vilahamn’s heading into this tie. After the Man City game on November 8th, Vilahamn and his team prioritised ensuring what led City to scoring didn’t happen again.
“We were looking into how they scored the goals, and then we looked into the details of box defending.” The City game caused Vilahamn to go back and reassess his defensive structure and ensure that, for the Derby, they were tighter at the back.
Unfortunately for Vilahamn, it ended up being that they conceded three more, causing him to take his emphasis away from the defence and instead they should “improve what we are doing as our identity.”
He wants them, following the Arsenal game, to focus “even more on the high press and make sure we are good with the ball because I don’t wanna look into how can we defend better in the low part because that’s not us, we don’t wanna be that team.”
It’s a brave and fearless approach that echoes Ange Postecoglou’s with the men’s team. For that system to work, it requires mental fortitude and a willingness to never give up no matter how hard the going gets.
“We were not really aggressive” he said of the Arsenal performance. The way they played went against the philosophy of the manager which is why he had them focusing on what they can do with the ball, rather than without it.
Mentality
Losing 3-0 at home against your biggest rivals is never a good sign, and the mentality of the players can take a beating because of it. It was their fifth defeat in six games, albeit four of those came against four of the top five sides in the league.
Vilahamn admitted that there was frustration and anger from all quarters, but that they “had a great meeting in the beginning of the week where we let everybody speak with emotions first before we reflected on the game.”
He gave them a space to say anything the players thought was worth saying in order to clear the air. He used it to start to look forward at what they can do better, rather than keep looking back on what went wrong in those games.
After that meeting on Monday, according to the manager, they’ve had a “great week with good training at a good intensity… I think it’s been one of the best weeks in training and mentally [we’re] much better again.”
It’s clear that Vilahamn is trying to address this rut and get them out of it as quickly as possible. The mentality of the players seems to be holding strong, but they need to start winning to keep those levels as high as they are.
There’s no better opportunity for that than taking a break from league action and going about securing passage to the knockout stages of the Women’s League Cup.
After their cup game versus Aston Villa, it’s an international break before Tottenham return home to Brisbane Road where they’ll play Everton on the 8th of December.
