Rehanne Skinner says that Tottenham Hotspur’s long term objective has to be playing UEFA Women’s Champions League football.
The Lilywhites have flirted with third place in the Barclays FA Women’s Super League this season but they are ultimately going to fall short. The club are still relatively new to top flight football but they are only interested in taking further steps forward in the coming seasons.
Head coach Skinner signed a new two-year deal with the club last week and when speaking to FAWSL Full-Time earlier today, she said that the long term aim at Spurs has to be UEFA Women’s Champions League qualification.
“I was delighted to sign a new contract,” Skinner said. “We have done a lot of work in the first 18 months or so to get to this point and my ambitions and the club’s ambitions are aligned. It is an opportunity to keep chipping away at the things that we have put in place to keep trying to move us forward.
“When I came to the club, I was very clear in the first conversation that I am only interested in looking up as a coach, as a manager, at the way that the club should be progressing.
“We should only be thinking about Champions League. We have to put the building blocks in place to enable us to get there and when we do get to that point, we need to make a really good effort to be in a competitive state. Obviously, a lot of things have got to happen to get to that point given the youth of the team in the context of how long we have been in the WSL.
“We are all realistic with it but at the same time, we have already shown that we can make huge strides in a short space of time. Ultimately, I’m just looking forward to spending the next couple of years making sure that it’s definitely something that we can compete in and that we can progress towards.”
Only Chelsea and Arsenal have conceded fewer goals than Spurs in this season’s Barclays FA Women’s Super League but The Lilywhites are the lowest scorers in the current top eight. Skinner went on to say that attacking reinforcements are likely to top her wanted list this summer.
She said “Yes, I think that side of it is clear for us. We’ve made it really difficult to break us down and we’ve got a really strong work ethic within the team. Everybody that’s come into the team has bought into that work ethic, so it’s contributed to making us hard to beat and it has certainly not been for want of creating opportunities.
“We’ve got into the final third at a high volume of times, so we’ve been really pleased with the progression of our possession as well but ultimately, you’ve got to score goals to win games and there have been games where we could have had more out of it, so that’s definitely a factor for us going into next year, we’ve got to strengthen the front-line.”
Spurs return to action on Sunday when Chelsea are the visitors to The Hive for a Barclays FA Women’s Super League fixture.