Tottenham Hotspur Women dispatched Leicester City away at King Power Stadium last Sunday. Thanks to first half goals from Tinka Tandberg and Olivia Holdt, Martin Ho’s side looked largely comfortable seeing out the win despite some second half trouble.
Lineup
We’re getting pretty familiar with Martin Ho’s lineups by now, and this one had all the typical features — that Nildén-Hunt-Koga-Rybrink back line, midfielders filling in at winger, and Beth England at the ten to make room for Tinka Tandberg. Notably, Ash Neville finally made the bench, a nice surprise given how wishy-washy Spurs have been about injured players’ potential returns.
How it all went down
Spurs started brightly, opening the attacking with a number of chances on goal in the opening stages, though (as I’ve gotten in the habit of saying after a few years) none found the back of the net. Tinka Tandberg struck in the 15th minute with a really scrappy toe-poke of an effort after Jess Naz’s deflected cross fell to her. I personally thought Tinka had taken too many touches once it fell to her, but she surprised me and apparently also the entire Leicester defense. Olivia Holdt added a second at 21’ after Eveliina’s pinpoint pass split Leicester up the middle. Olivia’s lovely effort came in a somewhat more joyous game state than her earlier goal against Manchester City.
Leicester pulled one back before the half after our defenders stormed to close down a run into the box and left Tierney open in front of the net. A case of our old box-defending demons coming home to roost yet again, perhaps, though I’d argue there was a foul on Tinka Tandberg in the build up that didn’t get called.
In the second half, Ho continued his habit of extensive rotation. We saw Olga Ahtinen come in for Drew Spence at halftime, and Anaya Dennis replaced Jess Naz at around the 60th minute. In the 65th minute, Martin hit us with a bit of old school Spurs nostalgia by bringing on Kit Graham and the long awaited Ashleigh Neville for Beth England and Josephine Rybrink. We also saw Martha Thomas finish out the closing stages of the game in place of the excellent Olivia Holdt.
Spurs control on the game slipped somewhat throughout the half, and towards the end, Leicester were really turning up the dial. However, they weren’t able to capitalize on any of that, and the game ended all square.
Thoughts
First things first, wow, look at Olivia Holdt go! This is much closer to the player I hoped we were signing back in January. She’s carrying the ball, she’s getting her head up, she’s picking out passes, and she’s scoring clever goals! What more could you want? I would love to see Olivia continue to thrive like this under Martin Ho.
Let’s take a moment to talk about Ash Neville’s return. Ash has been sidelined with an unspecified injury for most of preseason and the first few games of the season. The team and style of play have changed a lot in that time, so it’s not too surprising she looked a little bit off the pace. I was thrilled to see her getting in at least few Ash Neville classics — well-timed tackles, and some interplay with Amaya Dennis and the midfielders. Hopefully this is just the first step into Ash getting back into the swing of things.
I still have concerns about our depth options. We obviously saw this against Manchester City, but we saw it in a smaller way against Leicester City. Our attack isn’t the most dangerous as it is, but we see a huge drop off in threat when key figures like Olivia, Beth and Matilda aren’t on the pitch. Elsewhere, our passing and organization seem to struggle the more subs Martin makes. Don’t get me wrong, I think subs are great, I think rotation is phenomenal. I also think this it’s important for Martin to do now so he has a real sense of who’s in this squad and what they can do. I assume he’ll have some challenging decisions to make in future transfer windows.
Anyway, life is pretty good, huh? I obviously have questions about this side — top of the list are whether the attack has enough quality to consistently score goals, and whether the full team has enough quality to compete with anyone other than the midtable. But I was reassured by this game, I really was. We’ve struggled against Leicester in years past and dropped points to them when they were a much weaker team. If Martin Ho has the team consistently managing routine wins against comparable and inferior sides, I’ll take that.
Of course, I do feel a bit like I’m drawing on clown makeup every time I say something like this. I remember saying it about Robert Vilahamn, and I remember saying it about Rehanne Skinner before him. We’ve had a long history of coaches start strong and taper off, and I’m wary of going early on yet another manager, even if he does come with a more impressive pedigree and seemingly has turned around a bunch of players’ passing games overnight. And the signs are promising all around — judging by the club’s recent announcements about additions to the coaching staff (here, and here), it sounds like there’s a lot of structure being put into place behind the scenes. That should make things more stable season to season.
Looking ahead
Spurs face off against Brighton on Sunday. Brighton has had the next best start of any of the other midtable contenders (contenders for what? Don’t worry about it). They sit two points behind us in the table (and also two places, because we are 4th ahead of Arsenal. Read that twice because you won’t get that often!), though they suffered a somewhat less heavy defeat against Manchester City than we did.
Much like every other game against the perennial midtable sides shooting for progress, this will be a real test of the changes Martin’s made at Spurs. I, for one, am still unreasonably excited to watch more Ho-ball and notice some new things.