By Rachel Cohen
In the run up to their WSL game against Leicester City Spurs’ manager revealed that Daniel Levy had texted to congratulate him after the FA Cup quarter-final win over Manchester City. He also said that he’d like to play the semi-final in the main stadium, confirmed that the club plan to retain Amanda Nildén at the end of the season, described player-coach relationships as unacceptable, talked about healthy competition for places, the squad’s growing fitness and praised Amy James-Turner, Ashleigh Neville and his three keepers, among others.
Sunday’s game against Leicester
Vilahamn confirmed that Drew Spence is back in training after an illness that kept her out last Sunday and Molly Bartrip is back at the training ground, but Vilahamn said they were waitng for the Saturday training to know whether she can play or not.
He said that he expected Leicester to play in a similar style whoever is in charge.
He described this as an “important game” both preparation for Spurs FA Cup Semi-Final game, but also as an important game in the WSL because “they can actually come above us in the table. So for me to be motivated to go to this game with really 100% focus.”
Player-Coach Relationships
In the run-up to facing Leicester, a club now mired in two scandals over coach-player relationships, Vilahamn was definitive about whether coach-player relationships were ever okay, highlighting that what is important is the power relationships involved.
“I think it’s totally non-acceptable. I mean me as a coach are in a power position with the players. It is very much unprofessional to have a relationship with a player. I don’t think it should be a question that we raise here. It’s crazy. So, for me, no. It’s not professional and it shouldn’t be like that.”
Fighting for places
Vilahamn talked about enjoying how all the players were fighgting for their spots. “how Rossella came back and did those good minutes in the game, for example, and how Shuang and Vinberg showed in their time that they also are ready to compete.”
He also described an atmosphere which was both friendly but also competitive: “Right now we have a really nice environment where people try to beat themselves into the team. Right now you need to be really sharp to take a spot in the starting 11. I love that.”
Competing in the League
Vilahamn again reflected on Spurs being a long term project. As part of this he talked about Liverpool and Leicester as finding “a good tactical way to win games right now” but differentiated this from “the way we try to build ourselves and how to play and everything, it’s it takes more time.”
He said that for this reason he wasn’t scared of losing to these teams this season. Rather this is “part of the process” because “I know when we play like this and we’re going to develop the players, we’re going to beat them next year or the year after that.” That is because the end result is not to play for a single win, and then perhaps fall back down the league the year after but rather to keep building.
Amanda Nildén
The good news for Spurs fans is that Nildén looks like she will be staying at Spurs, with Vilahamn saying that he was ‘quite sure that she’s going to stay.’
He also said that he had followed her when he was at Hacken “because I had a left back in Hacken who competed against her in the national team and the national team always picked her instead of my left back. But now I love working with Amanda because she’s very good on the ball and she’s, you know, very skillful in many scenarios, but she’s still very young as well and it’s more potential in her.”
“I think she she gives us a left foot in the build up. We didn’t have that. I’d like to have those angles with the left foot left back.” He also highlighted her development of an attacking game “she’s taking steps in the attacking football because we know that she’s good defensively, but I know that she can do these overlaps.” And described her penalty as showing her “attitude” and that she was a “cool girl”.
Amy James-Turner
Vilahamn said that he had met with James-Turner today (Thursday) “and just told her how professional she is, how she’s been so good for me as a coach because she hasn’t played all the time and has just handled that in a professional way.” “She is the role model I want for my players.”
He talked about how she had reacted to getting a chance in the first team. “When she came in to the North London Derby and were were amazing in that game, and she took over that spot and after that she’s just been amazing in training on the field. I think she plays the best football I have seen her play and has a lot of self-confidence, good on the ball, good in the duels and then also like with this calmness in the penalty shootout, I was so impressed by her.”
He also clarified that after trying it out against Arsenal the team had practiced with Amy James-Turner as an extra striker in training but that it “didn’t look that great in training.” Nonetheless this meant that “everybody knew what was expecting from that. And of course it it worked. But that’s just because they are so good players to understand it. It’s not like the tactics working, it’s actually them just finding ways. And I just love them finding ways.” He also praised James-Turner’s ability to fill the role of the defender-striker: “Amy is a is a strong player with actually some really good technique there. So she works well right now in that phase.”
Ashleigh Neville’s return to the team
After Neville’s return from injury Vilahamn praised the right-back’s ability to both defend and win the ball describing her as “so good one against one to actually try to win the ball against opponents” and “a good ball carrier and attacking phase as well.” He suggested that she had the potential to develop further as a player.
He also talked about Neville’s ability to rebound from mistakes and keep going and how in that respect she is something of a role-model, “I kind of like that even if she do a little bit of a mistake where they score a goal she just keeps going the whole game and just gets back to the game and [is] brilliant after that. And those players are the players I want to work with. And when you have those role models for the other players, they just take after them and learn, it’s okay to do a mistake if you just keep going. And she’s the answer to that. So, I love working with her.”
The two goalkeepers
He was asked about the problems with keeping two goal-keepers happy after starting the season with Spencer, then playing Votikova and in the last two games, moving back to Spencer again. “If you ask them, I probably just keep one of them happy because I think the other one is not happy when they’re not playing? So and then you just need to deal with [the fact] that one is playing and one is not playing. And we actually have a third one who’s taking big steps, Eleanor. And so the training is amazing because we have three good goalkeepers competing. My job is to pick a player play and you know, sometimes people can say I’m doing the right stuff and some people can say I’m doing the wrong stuff, but I’m just trying to pick the right player to win the game and I just think.”
Asked about what that would mean for the semi-final he was not to be drawn. “Both of them are very cool goalkeepers who can handle it. So who knows who’s playing and not. But right now, Becky was amazing.”
Fitness and competing against Manchester City
Vilahamn has spoken previously about trying to imrpove the players’ fitness and was happy to talk about the steps that had been taken, something seen in the team’s 120 minute competitive performance against Manchester City.
“We do the testing from the beginning of the season, in the middle of the season, Christmas break and we see all the graphs, all the meters, that they’re getting more fit in the gym, they are breaking records in the maximum speed, and more speed meters and everything. So we follow that in a in a good way and the physical performance team is doing this stuff individually to make them be quicker, faster, be able to run more.”
“But sometimes when you train hard, you get tired. So the Aston Villa game, for example, was a game where we smashed the records in numbers, but [the players] got tired and they lost the quality in technique. So that’s the balance we need to find all the times we don’t lose the quality of the football as well.”
Playing in an FA Cup Semi-Final
Vilahamn talked about his happiness at getting a home draw for the semi-final “I really wanted to have a home game because have to play in front of our fans.” He also said that he would like it to be played at the main stadium and said that “we’re looking into that and hopefully we can find ways to make that happen.”
He also reflected on what the quarter-final win meant for him and the club: “When we won that game and then I saw the players happiness, the club’s happiness, you know the board, you know Daniel Levy Levy is actually happy and signing a text message that he really was happy about that win.”
And he talked about how that one club mentality could be used to propel Spurs to take those final steps in this competition. “You realize, okay, we are one club. We are actually having the whole of Tottenham behind us and. If you can bring that to the table and play a final in the end, I think we have a good chance to win any team, because then we’re gonna do it together, right?” But he dampened down fans who were already jumping ahead to the final “we are only in the semifinal, so we cannot celebrate anything yet. It’s more like an example that we are taking steps and that’s good.”
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