26th September 2024

By Rachel Cohen

Ahead of Spurs’ away game at Villa Park, Robert Vilahamn spoke to the press. He talked about his team’s big home win against Crystal Palace, Spurs’ chance creation and pressing and about wanting to improve the team’s home record. He was full of praise for members of the team, including newcomer Maite Oroz, Spurs stalwart Ashleigh Neville and ex-Academy player Lenna Gunning-Williams.

Player availability

Amanda Nildén got a black-eye in the last game and Vilahamn confirmed that her eye is currently “even more black” but that after a day off she is back and fully involved in training. Luana Bühler is currently having some treatment and is a doubt for the weekend but it sounds like we may get to see new signing, Ella Morris who will be available. Amy James-Turner and Shuang Wang remain unavailable.

Sunday’s opponents

Robert Vilahamn described upcoming opponents, Aston Villa as one of the teams spurs would be competing with, and trying to finish above in the league. Reflecting on Villa’s first game of the season he talked about their tactical flexibility, noting that they had used players off the bench and made tactical changes at half-time “which show that they have different players that they can use in different positions. They obviously have a coach that can handle flexibility in the tactics. They got some good chances in the end as well. So, I think they competed with Chelsea for the whole game.” As such he predicted that they would be tricky opponents and it would be a “very tough game”.

Spurs’ performance against Palance

Reflecting on Spurs’ 4-0 win against Crystal Palace in the first game of the season, Vilahamn was positive about the attacking play and especially that the team had “created so many chances – and in different ways.” “I feel like if we can create those chances every game, we’re gonna score a bit more goals, so I’m very pleased with the attacking football in the game.”

He was also pleased with how the team had pressed, emphasising the change from last season when “we were not really fit enough to do it. And then against Manchester City and some of the games, we were kind of destroyed when we did it.” He said that in preseason they had “worked quite much on the fitness level and press triggers and how we can be braver in the high press.”

“That said, he emphasized that the team could play in different ways and that “the first two goals is from pressing them to make mistakes where we win it in the counter-attack, and that’s also part of the identity. We don’t want to just have the ball and have the possession. We also want to be this quick attack in teams when we win the ball and I feel like we have that now. And I feel like Haley and Jess for this game was really, really good in in the intensity when they press and they are also really strong when they win the ball. So yeah, we work on it and we’re gonna be even better in the future.”

Although he was very happy that the team had won last week Vilahamn talked about “focusing on how to improve instead of just being happy that we won.” As part of this he gave a nod to the players pushing for improvement. “Players like Drew Spence, for example, the various winners, they want to improve small details in the game. So when you ask her a question she is not happy, she just want to show details on how we can improve in, in, in the press, in how we’re going to build up and so on.” Vilahamn described this as “the way to bridge the gap and actually go for the win in the future.”

Maite Oroz

Robert Vilahamn was full of praise for midfielder, Maite Oroz, who started on Sunday, barely a week after she had arrived at the club from Madrid. “From first minute on the pitch she’s just been brilliant. And you can tell that all the players love to play with her because she gets them, and she can get the ball to them, and she never lose the ball, and she’s so good to read the game.”

“I just love those players and especially how she can be so consistently good on the ball and play the ball forward so much. And then you see the last game, the magic with her and Drew, who was also very intelligent. It gives us so many different types of attacks. So I’m extremely impressed by Maite. She’s on another level.” 

Ashleigh Neville

Ashleigh Neville had a great game on Sunday against Palace. Vilahamn described her as “shining and she looks so fit and she looks so present.” He also revealed that there had been a turnaround in how the veteran full-back was training.

“I can be honest and say, Ashleigh was not a good training player last season. She was very good in the games, but she was struggling to be consistent in training and I was struggling to make sure I reached her in training. But then she was really good in the game, so she played anyway. And this season she trained so well and she has taken the competition [for] full-back in a certain way and that like that shows that you don’t need to be 19 to develop. It shows that you can also be in her age to develop. And I mean, she didn’t take a, anything, any step wrong in this game and she was, you know, out of possession, in possession.”

He also highlighted that Neville had been present for the whole preseason and that she had scored “a few goals that we were not allowed to talk about” in behind closed-doors preseason games.

Lenna Gunning-Williams

He was also very enthusiastic about ex-Academy player Lenna Gunning-Williams who got her first WSL minutes on Sunday. He described her as “consistently good in the training and in the friendly games” and that she had “showed that she’s not a youth player anymore …and she’s not only going to play minutes where she we are four nil up, she actually compete all of the game time.”

He said he believed Gunning-Williams might soon get minutes for the Under 23 national team. But also emphasized that there would be ups and downs. “She’s young. She needs to go through this procedure where she need to have some bad games, some good games. But she has the pace. She’s a very cool girl. She’s very technical, she’s very strong. She works really hard. So if you look at what kind of players I like and and both with skills and mindset and personality, I think she checks all the boxes. So it’s going to be very fun to work with her.”

Other players

When asked to expand on the comments he’d previously made about Hayley Raso being “kind of an upgrade” on Celin Bizet, Vilahamn was complimentary about both players, while emphasising that in his role he was always going to be more positive about Raso: “Now that she’s [Celin] not my player any more I’m always going to say that Hayley is better than Celin.” As part of this he alsoinsisted that ‘no matter how big the player is, we need to make sure that the club is the biggest one.’

In other player news Vilahamn confirmed that he would largely be using Jess Naz on the left wing this season. He said that Matilda Vinberg had not got minutes because other players had been showing a lot in preseason (namely Lenna Gunning-Williams and Anna Csiki) but he thought we might see her in the upcoming game.

Brisbane Road

Vilahamn recognised that last season the team had only got two wins in all the WSL games played at Brisbane Road and said that one of the aims of the season was to improve that, “because that’s our home ground and we should be strong there.” He said that he wanted “people [to] come there with fear, basically.” 

Social Media

Vilahamn also confirmed that he does still use social media “because I feel like it’s a good way for me to know what’s going on because I feel like sometimes it’s actually good to know what’s going on.” He did, however, note that people could be “rude rather than respectful”, “right now I can read those lines and make sure I’m not taking it too much personally.” While also emphasizing that some of the negatives came from “opponent fans”.