Sun 16 March 2025, 19:30
Tottenham HotspurRobert Vilahamn said that ‘we didn’t win our duels’ as we suffered a narrow 1-0 loss to Brighton & Hove Albion in the Barclays Women’s Super League on Sunday.
We started positively under the sun at Brisbane Road, but the visitors slowly grew into the game and broke the deadlock just minutes before the break, Fran Kirby with a composed finish from inside the box. Nikita Parris fired low shot into the side-netting while her, and Madison Haley, were later denied by Lize Kop as our number one kept the deficit at one.
At the other end, we struggled to create opportunities as we pushed for a leveller, with our best chance coming in the first minute of stoppage time, Ella Morris’ shot blazing over from the edge of the box, as Brighton held on to claim the three points.
It was the Seagulls' first win over us in the WSL since October, 2021, and Robert says the away side showed more fight in the duels during the game.
“It was a very physical game,” he told us afterwards. “Brighton are a high pressing team, very aggressive and we want to be that as well and I think that made the game not so good.
“We were both struggling in possession and to have a consistent play, they won the fight, they won the duels and they scored a goal, and we didn’t, so they won.”
On the conceding just before the break…
“It’s always tough when they score that goal, especially when it’s a head injury and she [Ella Morris] is down, but when you get that, you need to get back into the game, you want to find the momentum, but it was really hard to find a good flow. The pitch is not perfect, but that was for both teams, so it was more about how can you find a way to get into the game, there was a lot of duels and we didn’t win them… it was Brighton’s day.”
On pushing for a leveller…
“I think, collectively, we didn’t find the collaboration, the patterns, to get behind them. Individually, I think a few players looked good, Ella had a really good period of the game and created that chance at the end, Drew [Spence] winning balls and trying but, as a whole team, we don’t really nail a way to find the goal chances.”
On learnings to take ahead of West Ham…
“I think the out of possession, how we want to press high and how we want to have a high intensity, it wasn’t bad today, we did it together and we tried, we need to be better when we win it, how to make sure we can actually do a counter-attack, we need to be better in the build-up and then the duels because West Ham are also very physical, so we need to make sure we don’t lose those important battles, in the box for example.”
