Tottenham Hotspur head coach Rehanne Skinner says that she wants her side to increase their attacking threats against Brighton & Hove Albion on Sunday.
Spurs have netted just once in the Barclays Women’s Super League since opening day, that being an own goal scored by Liverpool’s Niamh Fahey.
When speaking in the pre-match press conference ahead of the Brighton & Hove Albion game, Skinner said that she wants her side to keep doing the same things but become more dangerous in and around the opposition box.
“Brighton are a tough test, they’ve had a lot of changes to their squad this year as well,” Skinner said. “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.”
Brighton & Hove Albion have had a tough start to the new season with games against Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea. Despite The Seagulls’ struggles against strong opponents, Skinner believes that the Sussex club are more attack-minded this year.
She said “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.”
Tottenham Hotspur’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture at Brighton & Hove Albion kicks-off at 2pm on Sunday.