Sunday saw our Women’s first team kick off their pre-season preparations with a 1-0 win over Liga F side Granada in humid conditions at Pinatar Arena, as part of our 12-day intense training camp in Southern Spain.
Signe Gaupset scored the only goal of the contest with six minutes left on the clock, ensuring we capatilised on a dominant performance after we created a number of opportunities throughout the 90 minutes while a large portion of our squad got valuable minutes.
Asked about her thoughts on the first pre-season friendly, Tilly told us: “It was good to finally play games again, have some minutes in the legs and good challenge for everyone to try to play we want to play in this heat.
“I think everyone did really well, good intensity without and with the ball, and we're just happy that we also could score in the end of the game. We want to have that winning mentality from last season.
“We want to start with that as soon as possible and now we want to play friendly games. If we look at the game, we created more chances than they did and I think it was a good release that we finally scored.”
When asked how pre-season work has gone so far, she added: “It's been really good. It's been tough. It's been hard sessions, hardworking but I think that's what we need if we want to take the next step and we're willing to do that as a team, as a group.
“As a club, we want to achieve more stuff this season and we're not satisfied with what we did last season. We did great things, but now it's like the next level, how can we reach that level in terms of hardworking and recovery.
Five of our new arrivals – Kirsty Hanson, Selma Panengstuen, Caitlin Dijkstra, Shekiera Martinez and Victoria Pelova - were also in action for the first time as a Spurs player and our Sweden international spoke about the importance of building relationships early on in pre-season.
“It's really important to get to know the new players and get to know their roles,” Tilly added. “It could be different from last season, of course, and I think the chemistry is something that we want to build on. I think we did that today and it was a good test for everyone to get some minutes, and as I said, to shine.”