Tottenham Hotspur head coach Robert Vilahamn says that his side are ready to grow their attacking game again after making some defensive adjustments in recent weeks.
Spurs very much had a licence to thrill in the first half of the season but their attacking brand of football often left them exposed at the back. The Lilywhites have adjusted their style in recent weeks with more focus being placed upon resolute defending.
The North Londoners play host to Aston Villa this weekend and when speaking in the pre-match press conference, head coach Vilahamn said that his side are ready to turn their focus towards attacking football once again.
“When you come to a club as a new coach with a new identity, you have to start with what that identity is and that’s attacking football,” Vilahamn said. “We went all in on that in the first half of the season. We are still going to do that but we are also going to show that we can defend and get results against some of the top teams.
“Since the 7-0 and 4-0 losses [against the Manchester clubs], we have focused a little bit more on how we want to defend together, showing that we can win in different ways. Now, we are at a point where we want to focus on attacking football again and keep the defence. Hopefully, we can take steps against Aston Villa.
“If you look at how we defend right now and how few shots we let the opponent have against us, we are a strong team defensively. I can see that everyone knows what to do defensively. The next step is to know what to do but have the energy to go and attack again. That’s what we are working on right now.”
Spurs defeated latest opponents Aston Villa 4-2 in the reverse fixture back in October. The Villans haven’t always got the results that they have deserved this season but Spurs boss Vilahamn sees the Midlands side as a quality opponent.
He said “If you look at them last year, they were very impressive with how they played and they beat most of the teams below them. This year, they’ve had high expectations and they had some tough results at the start. They had some good performances in those games but didn’t win them.
“They are a good team with a good coach. If they have a good day, we will have a very tough game. On the other hand, we have taken steps from that game [in October] to now, so we are in good shape. We know that we can dictate the game and win it if we reach the level that we want to reach.
“It’ll be fun to see how we do. Aston Villa are one of the teams that we want to have below us in the table this season.”
Tottenham Hotspur’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture against Aston Villa kicks-off at 2pm on Sunday afternoon. Tickets remain on-sale and can be purchased by clicking here.
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