Presser Points | Leicester vs Spurs (WSL) | Robert Vilahamn

Robert Vilahamn spoke to the media on Friday afternoon to look ahead to Sunday’s Barclays Women’s Super League at Leicester City (2pm UK).

Here’s what he had to say…

On team news…

Robert: “It’s good. We have a lot of players training so it’s only Bethany [England] who can’t be in the squad for this weekend.”

On attacking balance…

Robert: “Obviously Bethany is an amazing finisher, so that’s one thing, then it’s a mixture of how we play, create chances, and the self-confidence of the attacking players. We worked a lot the past weeks to find our identity, how we want to create chances and, I think against West Ham, we actually played some really good football and had some chances, but they scored on that deflection. It’s a mixture of quality, of course, and the phase we are (in). We need to keep working on those moments, make sure the players who are in those moments get the confidence to over-step that. It’s a mixture of quality, but a bit of self-confidence, I guess.”

On adapting the starting XI for each game…

Robert: “When we look at the starting XI, how we want to use the squad, it comes down to performance, who should start, and then it comes down to tactics. Using Charli [Grant] on the left wing is because she’s very loyal, a threat to do those runs and early crosses, so we wanted to play out, play through their press and have a really good runner who can do that. In different games, we might not play that, we want to have players who can do one-v-ones and so on, so we need to check that for the next game. There’s a plan with everything – sometimes it works, sometimes not - Charli has done two good games, but we need to break it down to how do we score more goals. If that’s a full-back or winger, or maybe it’s striker that plays to the left, then that’s what we’re working on in the week.”

On building confidence…

Robert: “I was a striker when I played, I had my bad moments when I didn’t score for a long time, then I had my good moments when I scored everything but you need to practice, practice and practice, and that’s what we’re trying to do in every training session, to find the net in training so you can do it in games. It’s then about relationships, so you need to start playing with the players, building those relationships, and that’s been a struggle this year. We’ve had injuries, perhaps nobody has taken the chance to play ten games, so we’ve had to change players, that’s not perfect for self-confidence, but that’s part of the competition. Last season, Martha [Thomas] was on fire at the start of the campaign, it became more logical on who is playing, who is coming on, this year it’s been a little more back and forth but still, if you look at the games against Man City and West Ham, those are two games where we’ve created chances. We just need to make sure we still believe, push to get more of those chances as we have the capacity to win these games.”

On Leicester City…

“They have a new coach this season, they started quite tough but, now, they have had a few really good results.  We are aware of how they play, what their strengths are, what we did against West Ham was actually quite a good performance for most of the game, but we need to make sure we become more effective in the box, defend better as well. We have a good chance to have a good game and get a result. If we can turn these losses into a win, then we actually have a good phase to go through the last four games to try and climb the table, instead of looking down.”

Asked further about Leicester’s style of play…

Robert: “We always want to go into a game where we can dictate, i’ve learned in this league that it’s very hard against the top four, but I have to believe that we should be able to try and dictate the games against the teams around us, and that’s why we always focus on ourselves quite a lot. Then we break it down to, where are the spaces? How do Leicester play in and out of possession? We’re going to focus on ourselves a lot on Sunday and in the upcoming games because that’s the way to look good, even next season. We need to start building that now, we cannot go into this game hoping to win by kicking long as then we lose our identity, we’re going focus on us and hope we can dictate the game against Leicester.”

On the mood in the squad...

Robert: “Losing games is not fun, especially not when you do it in a row, but the main thing about football, and life, is you just keep going. You need to find solutions to get better and get that win, so I’m actually feeling fine. It’s tough to lose games but when you are done with that feeling for 24 hours, you’re focusing on tactics, performance, starting XI, the squad, and it’s more tricky to handle a squad and everything around it when you’re losing games, but that’s why I love to work with this. There’s so much that you learn from this, so much you can use when we fix these problems, and even if we lose on Sunday, it’s like ok, what do we need to improve? Because we’re still looking very good in some phases of the game. We still have a clear view of what we’re going do, we’ve had a tough year, but we need to learn from this instead of feeling like everything is dark.”

On Eleanor Heeps' call-up to England Under-23s…

Robert: “Sometimes you just look at the result in the table and you think ‘ok… we were better last year, now we’re worse’, but if you look at what we have in our squad, the age groups, how they’re in and around the national teams now, we have Under-23s, Under-19s, the Academy team doing really good stuff. That’s what I also see that we’re doing good stuff this year and we’re going to have the benefit next year as well. Eleanor Heeps is a really good example, when I came in last year, Perry [Suckling] started to work with her, she was extremely far away from being in the game squad. She was very insecure, not brave on the ball, but through this journey with Perry and now with Chris [Williams], she has grown with this team, she has become a really cool character who has played some really good games this season, and she is now a future Lioness. So, that shows we still do good stuff here, even if we lose games, Lenna [Gunning-Williams] is another good example as well, Ella Morris is another one. Jess was dropped this time (by Sarina Wiegman), but she’s still got potential to back in the squad for the Euros, so we need to look at the bigger picture.”

On Ella Morris…

Robert: “Ella was a big target for us because we saw the potential in her. Unfortunately, she had some injuries this season, so we haven’t really had the pleasure to work with her so much, but now she’s had a few games on the run and you can see her potential. It's having an impact on us, now we have this really cool full-back who has the future to become a really high standard player, so that brings the competition up in the full-back positions. It also gives us some good moments on the pitch, there are still moments she needs to improve, for West Ham, she came into so many crosses, in the first half she didn’t really nail it, but then in the second half she had a really good cut-back. There’s still potential, but that’s what we need to take the next step, I’m really happy for her, she’s extremely professional and a good character.”

On his midfield options…

Robert: “If you look at how we want to play, using our central players in build-up and attack, it's a lot of demand on technical skills. All the players we have in those positions have that – Anna Csiki, Olga Ahtinen, Kit Graham - the main thing is how they play together and defend. This league is so competitive in every moment. In the last game, there were some magic moments between those three (Maite Oroz, Eveliina Summanen and Drew Spence), they definitely are on a higher level when we have a good day and they make us look good when they play.”

Watch | Vilahamn speaks to the media