Tottenham Hotspur head coach Rehanne Skinner hopes to see her side perform well with the ball when they travel to Kingsmeadow to face Chelsea this evening.
The Lilywhites have shown an improvement when facing the Barclays FA Women’s Super League’s top teams this season with Skinner’s side having taken points off Arsenal, Manchester City and Manchester United.
This evening, Spurs face Chelsea for the first time this season and while they will have to do plenty of defensive work at Kingsmeadow, head coach Skinner hopes to see her side work well in possession to take some of the pressure off the goalkeeper and the back-line.
“We have got to be mindful of the spaces that they will try to exploit and we have prepared for what that might look like in a couple of different ways,” Skinner said when speaking to FAWSL Full-Time in the pre-match press conference. “The team are outstanding at taking on information, asking questions, problem solving as a collective and that’s one of the things that has helped us this year with our defensive resilience and the way that we have made life difficult for other teams.
“On the flip side, we are working hard on improving our in-possession work against these more established teams and that then minimises the amount of defending that you have got to do. We are trying to be better on the ball against these top teams and obviously, we are making sure that we are defensively resolute and hard-working to try and minimise the threats of the front-line that they have.”
Skinner went on to say that nothing surprises her about Chelsea and that you know what you are going to get from Emma Hayes’ side.
She said “They’re doing what they would normally do, they’re competitive and make life difficult for everybody else. The depth of the squad is significant so the expectation is for them to do well. They are now catching up with the games that they have missed and progressing as many would have expected.
“It’ll be a tough test for us but one that we are looking forward to because it’s the first time that we have played them this season.”
Tottenham Hotspur’s Barclays FA Women’s Super League fixture at Chelsea kicks-off at 7.45pm this evening.
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