By Rachel Cohen
24^th January 2025

Robert Vilahamn spoke to the media in the middle of a very busy run of games for Tottenham Women. Among other things, the manager spoke about the mid-week defeat to West Ham, provided updates on squad players and talked about how a technical director might improve Spurs’ recruitment.

Player availability

Robert Vilahamn said that there were no new injuries ahead of the weekend (Ella Morris, Eveliina Summanen and Kit Graham remain out). But he also spoke about two squad players that seem to have disappeared over recent months: Shuang Wang and Amy James-Turner.

He indicated that there is a possibility Shuang will be moving out of the club either permanently or on loan this window. Vilahamn said that she had “obviously played very small minutes and she wanna play more. So it’s depending on if we find a club that she want to play for and they want to use her then then might be happening. But until we know that she’s still a part of the organization here.”

James-Turner he said was “a different story” and that she remained a part of the team and was training on grass and being monitored closely.

Upcoming game

Vilahamn described Sunday’s WSL opponents, Crystal Palace as “better than people might expect”, praised their manager and new signings and highlighted how close their game against Arsenal was for the first part of the game. He said that he wanted his side to “go out into this game with them with a good energy and make sure we do a better performance than last.” And said that after two games in which the team had not played very well, he mainly wanted “to make sure we play a little bit better football, that we are a little bit more thoughtful.”

Current form

The manager reflected on the fact that Spurs are currently in the same league position as they finished the season last year (sixth) but contrasted this season to last emphasising that while the position was the same both performances and the team’s feeling about them has changed. “Last year we were quite good for a long time and we were still sixth in the table. Where we are now top six, but we’re not really happy with the performance. Last year we were more happy with the performance.”

West Ham cup loss

Talking about the mid-week League Cup loss to West Ham Vilahamn said that he was pleased that the team had created more chances than they had against Leicester but described conceding two goals late in the first half as “a tough one” and that his team had tried and failed to get back in the game. He admitted that his use late on of Anna Csiki as centre back, with Clare Hunt moving into the attack as a target-person was a “desperate” attempt to use Csiki’s strong left foot to get the ball into the box. This was, he said, “not how we wanna do [things] sometimes you need to gamble and do something. You know, you need to just do something to try to.”

As someone who has been reticent to use substitutes, Vilahamn’s use of four substitutes in the cup game was notable (Anna Csiki, Charli Grant, Lenna-Gunning Williams and Olga Ahtinen on for Drew Spence, Amanda Nilden, Jess Naz and Maite Oroz). He said that this was not strictly related to the players brought off, but nor was it entirely planned. Rather, the team faced “a tough two to three weeks with games, and the last 10 minutes [of the first half] were not great against West Ham and sometimes you can use new energy players to make sure we try to go for it in a second-half. And also protect the players to make sure they are quite fresh with these games coming up against Crystal Palace.” 

Martha Thomas’ confidence

Her fifth minute goal on Wednesday was striker, Martha Thomas’s first of the season. Vilaham said that he believed it had given her confidence. “I think you can tell from that goal that the rest of the game she was relaxed, that there was a good flow in her game.” He added that she had gone on to train “very well today.” But he also pointed out that she had contributed assists (to Matilda Vinberg and Bethany England) in recent games and that “She’s been up upgrading her version of herself all the time, and I think she building self-confidence and she’s an important player for us.”

“I just hope that she can get back to that, you know, not thinking and scoring goals like she did. Because when she had the best spell when I came [at the start of last season], during the first six, seven, eight games and she basically scored all the time then and I know as a striker that’s the best feeling you can have.” 

Recruitment

Vilahamn said that he was unable to comment about transfer rumours relating to his ex Hacken-player and Swedish international Josefine Rybrink. But talked about bringing one more player in during this window, as well as some potential outgoings. He also spoke about the importance of getting in a new technical director for the club’s ability to recruit in the future.

In discussing this he said that getting a technical director would facilitate the women’s team being able to recruit in the same way as the men’s albeit with “different parameters for women’s football” and emphasized that “to be One Club and to try to have one identity you need also to make sure you have a similar way of recruiting young talent. And if you think that the manager can do that, it’s impossible with the timing of that, and [because] you can find talent all over the world now in women’s games. You need people who have the network. You don’t wanna use the agents because then you always end up with a few agents. You wanna make sure you control your own policy, and that’s what the club wanna do. And I love how they wanna do it.” Perhaps that means that in future windows the club will be less reliant on Vilahamn and we will see fewer ex-Hacken players coming in.