Tottenham Hotspur head coach Robert Vilahamn was delighted with his side’s impressive 1-0 North London Derby victory over Arsenal at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this afternoon.
Spurs put in a tremendous performance against The Gunners, claiming both the three points and the bragging rights of North London.
When speaking in the post-match press conference, Spurs boss Vilahamn was thrilled with his side’s performance.
“The players just keep working for what we want to do and today, you could see that they were there to do it at this stadium,” Vilahamn said. “Arsenal are a very good team and they pushed us back, but we were still being brave enough to actually try to play them out. The goal is evidence for what we’re going to do with this team.
“Also, the defensive work today with the compactness and how we actually found the right press triggers – there was a lot of good defending.”
Spurs’ winning goal came from the boot of forward Martha Thomas. The Scotland international’s bottom corner finish was the difference in this afternoon’s North London Derby. Vilahamn commented on how the goal is a reflection of the identity that Spurs are trying to build in their playing style.
He said “That’s how we want to score goals, it’s not on set-pieces or one quick ball in-behind, we want to be playing through lines, we want to have speed and we want to score in those ways. That’s basically how a Tottenham Hotspur team should score a goal and it was really brilliant.”
Spurs’ North London Derby victory was made even more special by the fact that they achieved it in front of a big home crowd at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Vilahamn reflected on how important the occasion was for his side.
He said “We are showing the first step of the power in this club and how we can actually make sure this is one of the clubs that takes women’s football to the stage that it should be. The players are very good and they deserve to play at the big stadiums with an enormous fanbase. Even if we don’t fill the stadium, we have an atmosphere here to show that we can keep going. The players, the fans, everybody did it together today.
“My mission is to win games and develop players, but the biggest thing I need to do is to develop the team so that they actually get this environment. I think we need to play a certain way, we need to show the fans that we play good football and give us the first step in this journey.”
Tottenham Hotspur go into the Christmas break in sixth position in the Barclays Women’s Super League table.
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