Ho outlines expectations and praises resilience and courage ahead of Aston Villa

Tottenham Hotspur Women travel to Villa Park on Sunday in the Barclays Women’s Super League, where they intend to close the gap with the top four.

Head coach, Martin Ho spoke to the media ahead of this away trip, where he outlined squad updates, expectations, and the importance of home advantage and support.

With four consecutive losses in all competitions, Aston Villa look to regain form with a result against Spurs. However, Ho remains confident in his Tottenham side and aims to secure three points to push closer to a top three place.

Team News

Regarding team news, the squad remains the matchday squad selection remains the same to last weekend except from the return on Maika Hamano to the team. She was ruled out against Chelsea due to being a loanee from the London club.

A positive update for Australian defender, Charli Grant, who is back on the training pitch. Ho expects she will be available for next week’s Adobe Women’s FA Cup clash with London City Lionesses, should all go to plan with her return to full training.

Drew Spence remains suspended following her red card picked up against West Ham United two weekends ago.

Summanen: Spurs centurion and new contract

Following her 100th appearance for the club, Eveliina Summanen signed a new, long-term contract with the club. Ho had nothing but praise for the Finnish midfielder as she commits her future to Spurs:

“Yeah, important. She's been, she's key in our buildup and how we play with the ball. She's very influential off the ball in terms of being combative when she's up close and those one v one duels. And the beauty for Eve is there's still a lot of work we feel she can grow within. She can still be better as a player. and that's probably the beauty of football when you have such a player that can still be better.

It's only going to benefit us for the success moving forward and to make 100 appearances is very, very impressive because it shows how important she's been to this team and to this club for a long period. And yeah, she’ll continue to play a huge part in our plan moving forward.”

Wijk’s debut and Blakstad’s attacking role

Hanna Wijk made her first start for Tottenham Hotspur in Sunday’s clash with Chelsea. Regarding her progression into the first team and adaptation to the intensity of the WSL, Ho was complimentary of her performance on debut and quality:

“I was delighted for Hanna. I think she's had a bit of an unsettling time, Charlotte. Since she got here, she's had a little bit of illness and when you get illness, it obviously sets you back and then you're trying to build back up again and she's got herself now in a place where she's training well. You start to really see her qualities within the training group and yeah, it can be a big game putting someone in for the debut, but I feel Hanna was ready for that and I think a performance in the game was good.

She had some moments where she can be better tactically, but I thought for her first game starting a debut, big stadium, derby against Chelsea, against one of the big teams, I thought she performed exceptionally well and she's settling in really well with the group now. She's understanding more about the playing style and how we want her to play an operate.

And we'll start to see, as it goes along, you'll start to see her development to the player we want her to be in yeah, I'm delighted for her that she made her debut and yeah, her performance was quite solid.”

Another January addition, Julie Blakstad, started on Sunday. However, this weekend she played a more attacking role in comparison to previous weeks. Ho expressed this was a deliberate choice to see what she could bring in those advanced positions, and create a better balance down the left side:

“It was more to see what we could, what we could get in terms of having a bit more balance down that left side and give us two left footers on the same side of the pitch, which we've not always had and Julie being more direct and definitely a threat in terms of being one v one. But also give us balance in terms of when we were defending if they were going to play really are advanced with Ellie Carpenter that enabled us to nullify that threat maybe at times.

But yeah, I think Julie as an attacking threat gives us a lot of crossing ability is really good. Physical capabilities in the pressing phase is really good. So that gave us a different dimension. It's something yeah, we will look at and there's other players that can do the same.”

Reflecting on Chelsea

Despite a 2-0 defeat to the reigning WSL Champions on Sunday, there are several positives to be taken from the match. In particular, Ho and his staff were impressed with the way the team conducted themselves in the first half:

“I’ve spoken to a lot of the staff around me and people away from here, whose opinion I value. They've said about the performance in the first half and when I look back at it two or three times, first half I thought we created a lot of chances and they need to go. So, we'll be proud of that part of the performance. The ruthless edge needs to be there.

But then second half we had moments again. We had Tinka’s [Cathinka Tandberg] chance, Olivia's [Holdt] chance, and they had a few moments themselves when we opened up and tried to go and push the game. 


But I thought overall I thought there was positives to take from it. Do we want to be better? Yes. Am I happy with losing a game? No. But I think we've definitely taken bigger steps, and we definitely performed well in that first part of the game, but we want to do that for 90 minutes.”

Ho also added that he was impressed with the attacking threat Spurs posed, particularly showing courage and bravery to create dangerous situations which forced Chelsea to defend and react quickly: 

“Yeah, the braveness to play and the composure we had were even when we were on high pressure. The variants in our game to play in front of them and play beyond them. I thought we were very good in terms of when we got between the lines and we broke past their midfield line. I think we got into some really dangerous situations. But it's more the courage and bravery to play our way.”

Overall, the positive impact of the big steps taken by Spurs since the summer are evident: Ho recognises that they are more confident and believe going into big fixtures, instead of fearing the expectations of these bigger games:

“But we can look at that from real positive impact where we was maybe two months ago, three months ago to where we are now six months down the line and then also from if you're looking twelve months back where we was, we've took big steps and this year's about consolidating and really putting in place clear foundations that we can build a successful team from.

And I think the players have really built on those performances in those big games where they go in confident, they don't go in with fear, and we just need to find ways to really get over the line in one of those games.”

Expectations of Aston Villa

Ahead of Sunday’s trip to Villa Park, Ho set out his expectations of a strong Villa side, who have perhaps been unlucky to drop points in tight recent fixtures: 

“Yeah, I think you look, we played them in the Subway Cup. We played them in the league already and they've been too really close encounters and, we know it's going to be a difficult game when a team comes off the back of defeat as we've seen with Chelsea, there's going to be a response. And they haven’t performed badly and those games and once because they've been really tight and we know games in this league are tight now.” 

Aston Villa are notable for their goal scoring threats and resilience in defence, which poses a challenge for Spurs to break them down and win the battles on the pitch:

“They've got really good goal scoring threats in that attacking third and very good on the break. And they're very resilient when they defend them. We're going to have to be diligent enough to break them down, but we're going to have to be even smarter to make sure that we stop them at the other end.”

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and support

In the London Derby, Spurs played the first of three fixtures at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. When questioned about his preference between the atmosphere at the bigger stadium, or the smaller and more intimate feel of Brisbane Road, Ho expressed that home advantage is vital:

“Either, either for me, Charlotte. I feel when we're playing at home that's the most important thing. That we create a fortress and make it difficult for opponents to come to that we perform at a good level for a consistent period within that game. And we can have our fans there.”

The head coach credited the Spurs fans for their support and noise, regardless of location, as this plays a huge role in encouraging the team:

“The fans are outstanding, whether they're at Brisbane Road or whether at the stadium, I think they've been outstanding. The noise even at the stadium the other day, yes, it’s a big stadium and it wasn't full but the players, they’ll still struggle to hear me from the side of the pitch. You can see how loud it was and how intimidated, how intimidating they made the game. And the same a Brisbane Road when we've had a lot of fans there, that's still intimidating.

So yeah, either ground's fine as long as we are performing and we're getting results and we're playing the way we want to play, and we're making games competitive, then stadium’s fine. but as always you want to as a team and as a head coach, you want to play as many games in the main stadium as you can.”

On Sunday, men’s first team player, Mathys Tel was in attendance for the women’s fixture. Ho reminded the importance of collaboration and support within the club, across both the men’s and women’s sides:

“Yeah, important. and you want to make sure there's a collaboration and continuity with us supporting them, them supporting us and it has to fit in schedule for every player and to make sure that they can do that but it's wonderful that he was there supporting the team and shows the value and the interest in women's football now.  

Yeah, and I think if that happens more often, it definitely will happen more often. We're very thankful for anyone at the at the club with its players or staff to come to watch.” 

WSL schedules

After this weekend’s WSL fixture, there is a month-long break for Spurs. When asked whether this will disrupt the momentum and group preparations, Ho spoke about the loss of rhythm and continuation. 

“Yeah, having a, when you're performing and you just want to play games every time, then like we've had this group of games now within a schedule where you played every week for so many weeks. Whether that's Cup, whether that's league, you have a big block of games where you can continually build momentum.

Yeah, when you have a break, obviously it breaks your, your rhythm within, within the team. But that's not that's not going to take anything away from how we focus. It doesn't make us think that we've got to win this game because the next league game is a month away, and we just have to focus on what we control. That's the performance against Aston Villa and what's in front of us. and then after that, anything else we'll focus on when it comes to that point.”

However, he reminded that all clubs are in the same position and therefore no team is disadvantaged in comparison to another:  

“But the breaks obviously are,  don't give you as much rhythm, but every team is in the same situation so are we. And we just have to embrace that because that's part of part of the job, part of the player's job and part of my job as head coach to make sure that we get them back on track when they come back.”

Spurs face Aston Villa on Sunday 15 February (12:00 KO BST), where they look to regain form with three points to close off their WSL campaign for February.