Vilahamn reflects on pre-season opener against London City Lionesses
Sun 18 August 2024, 17:00|
Tottenham Hotspur
Robert Vilahamn was pleased with his side's performance as we ran out 6-1 winners against London City Lionesses in the opening game of our pre-season programme on Saturday.
In our first 90 minutes in nearly three months, the notable headlines were that 23 players all got match minutes in warm conditions at Hotspur Way with defender Ella Morris and young forward Araya Dennis also making their first appearances for the Club.
We opened the scoring on 19 minutes as Shuang Wang grabbed her first goal in Lilywhite before Jess Naz doubled our advantage eight minutes later with a composed finish from inside the box.
Despite the visitors cutting the deficit in the closing stages of the first half, we took control after the break as Martha Thomas reinstated our two-goal advantage, followed by a brace from Lenna Gunning-Williams, who enters the new campaign on the back of scoring 14 goals in all competitions for Ipswich Town last season, before midfielder Olga Ahtinen wrapped up the scoring.
Speaking to us after the game, Robert told us: “We played a lot of players and they all looked like Spurs players, trying to do everything that we have worked on and that was really pleasing for me.
“They also showed how good competition we have, the second XI came in with a lot of energy and scored some beautiful goals, whereas the first XI needed to break London City Lionesses down, so we did it together and it was a pleasure to see all the players perform in this way in the early stages of pre-season because we have a lot of work to do, however it’s only two weeks in and we look like a team already now.”
Lenna and Araya
Robert added: “Lenna developed well on her loan spell last season, now we are looking at Araya and Lenna to make sure they are very close to competing.
“And they showed that, Lenna scored two beautiful goals and she was one of the best players on the pitch, so to see these young players developing in our environment and to make sure we can give them playing time, I like that because that’s what we want to do at the Club and what I want to do as a coach.”
