Every word from Rehanne’s pre-Brighton press conference

Ahead of this weekend’s trip to Crawley to face Brighton & Hove Albion at the Broadfield Stadium in the Women’s Super League on Sunday (2pm KO), Spurs Women Head Coach Rehanne Skinner sat down at Hotspur Way for her pre-match press conference.

Here's what she had to say on the following subjects...

Ellie Brazil’s ACL injury

“I was gutted for her. She’s worked incredibly hard to get back to being fit. She was in a really good place for us leading into this game and unfortunately it was one of those moments where a little bit of a lack of control on the landing after the impact has created a problem for her in the game. 

“She’s doing as well as can be in the circumstances. It’s always difficult for players to be out for chunks of time and she’s obviously worked really hard to get back and now is facing another spell out of the game. 

“For us, we’ve only signed her in the summer, she’s an exciting, talented player, and I think it’s a big blow for her and for the team and we’ll do everything that we need to do to get her on track and get her back moving forward for us in time.

“In terms of her personally, the journey ahead is going to be the bit that’s the most important thing and the support that the Club gives her, which we will. She’s been in today, back in and around the team straight away, optimistic and positive about getting back on track and doing what she needs to do. She’s a really hard-working individual and she’s very grounded as well, so she knows what she needs to do. Naturally, there will be ups and downs, but we’ll get her on track.

“For any player, when you go down, and the pain that she suffered, she was concerned for sure. The initial testing was quite optimistic actually but she’s quite unique in terms of how athletic she is and how her body responds to injuries, so we were a little bit unsure because of how she was. I think after that point, we had the scan and unfortunately when we learned that she’d done her ACL it was disappointing for all of us really. 

“We’ll get her back on track in the future and have her back as a long-term project with us. We’ll hope to get her back in sooner rather than later.”

Education around ACL injuries in the women’s game

“I still think there’s a huge amount to do. We’ve been really unfortunate in the last couple of weeks to have two in different circumstances. When you look across the game in the course of the last four or five months, I can name 12. The volume is so high that clearly the demands of the game are changing and we definitely need to understand what that involves more. 

“When you look at the length of time that players have been professional and their relative training age, not their actual age, for being professional footballers, it’s very varied across any squad, our squad included. 

“The things that we need to learn about physiological elements and whether there are links to menstrual cycles and all of those bits, I still just think there’s not enough research available for us to formulate collectively in the women’s game the best possible plan moving forward. I think we’ve still got an awful lot of work to do to try to help every club and every player to be in the best possible position. 

“We work on individual programmes and develop pre-hab and injury prevention programmes based on deficiencies in all of our players, as I’m sure every club does. Ultimately, when you have situations like that, you can’t even see trends across what’s happened in terms of what’s led to them, which is the hardest part to be able to action.”

How the fixture schedule affects injuries

“It has posed some challenges this year for us. It didn’t actually pose us any last year, but it’s just peaks and troughs. You don’t know when it’s going to cause you a problem. 

“Collectively, across the league, the timing was crazy for the September international window, if I’m being really honest. Right before a league season starts after a major tournament that’s gone on quite late in the summer period, it’s really important that it’s reviewed looking at next year when the World Cup is going to finish so late as to what time we restart the league. 

“There definitely has to be the things factored into how players’ wellbeing and physical and mental health is looked after after major tournaments and the timing of what needs to happen in between times in the first part of the season. It’s relentless for international players up until Christmas. That’s additional loading that we have to all be mindful of, so it’s definitely something to review.”

Further team news

“Positives are that Kerys Harrop is going to be in a position to be in the squad and playing again this weekend, so that’s a good thing. It’s taken time to get her back on the grass but she has started migrating back towards that. We’ve got Chi back in the squad again, so that’s a couple of extras that are now getting closer to being in a position to impact the games more, so that’s really positive. 

“We’ve lost Ellie in this timeframe, but other than that, the players we’ve been having in every squad are still available. Ramona Petzelberger’s going to need a little bit more time to come back into the squad and I don’t have a timeframe on that right now. Kit’s improving brilliantly. She’s worked really hard over the timeframe and we’re talking November last year, so she’s getting much closer to being in a position to re-join training. 

“When she re-joins training, you know you’re in a position where you’ll be close to the pitch in a short space of time after that. She’s on the grass but still modifying some of the bits that she’s doing. Her progress has been great so we’re really pleased with where she’s at.”

Forward area

“We’re going through a phase at the moment where we don’t have our squad at anywhere near full capacity in terms of what players we have signed for us. With that, when you get injuries, it has a dent on whichever unit that’s associated to. We’ve lost two players in the forward line recently, so yeah it’s a challenge but we’ve got to make sure that we use the quality that we have to our benefit. 

“There’s definitely players in the squad that have got excellent capabilities and it’s up to them to step up. It’s about the entire squad. It’s always the same, no matter who’s fit and who’s not. It’s always about the squad as to how successful you’re going to be, so we just need to manage what that looks like moving forward and make some decisions on that when we need to for the squad depth.”

Brighton up next

“I just think we take every game as it comes. We want to take points out of every single game. It’s not about who it is, it’s about the game in front of us. Three points are important, any points are important. To keep moving forward and improve on what we did last year, we need to be taking points from as many games as we possibly can in order to keep up the pace that we set last year with it. This is the next one in front of us and we want to make sure we go there and take three points out of it if it’s possible on the day.

“Brighton are a tough test. They’ve had a lot of changes to their squad this year as well. There’s been differences within each game that they’ve played, so we’re preparing for some different elements from them. I thought they played very well against Chelsea last week and that’s shown the progress within what they’re trying to achieve. 

“Ultimately, the biggest thing for us is that we’ve got to start in the way that we started against Liverpool and we managed the ball well in periods against Man City as well, where I thought we were really effective getting from the back of the pitch to the front. I think we’ve got to be continuing to do what we are with dangerous possessions in and around the final third and then creating more goalscoring opportunities. We want to increase the volume of that going into this game.”

“Their squad has changed quite a lot. They’ve added quite a few new players in this year. For any squad that’s integrating players, and we’ve had similar at times, sometimes it takes a little bit of time to be able to gel. 

“There’s been variations within their games leading up to this point. I think that they’ve been much more of an attacking threat in some of their most recent games and I thought they were very defensively organised and worked really hard against Chelsea recently. 

“They’ve got threats in terms of Lee Geum-min and Katie Robinson, who I think are starting to play very well and are definitely in form. They’re players that we need to be able to manage within our game, so they’re going to pose us a test and we want to make sure that we’re making it as difficult for them as possible in their home ground and making sure that we take the game to them to nullify their opportunities to get at us. They’ve definitely been really positive in the final third and committing a lot of numbers forward, so that’s something that we’re very mindful of.”