Crystal Palace 0-7 Spurs (WSL) | Martin Ho's verdict
Martin Ho described his players as ‘outstanding’ as we recorded a thumping 7-0 victory over Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park on Sunday afternoon in the Women’s Super League.
Olivia Holdt led the way with a 23-minute second-half hat-trick followed by Victoria Pelova grabbing a brace – her first in Spurs colours – alongside Amanda Nilden netting her first of the season and Shekiera Martinez getting off the mark at the Club, with all seven goals coming remarkably in the second period.
The first half was a completely different story, though, as we just couldn’t find a breakthrough despite Palace finding themselves down to 10 players after just seven minutes, Fuka Tusonda shown a straight red card after a strong challenge on Cathinka Tandberg.
However, once Oli opened the deadlock just four minutes after the restart and the floodgates opened from that point onwards, as we went on to maintain our unbeaten start to the 2026/27 WSL season and climb up to second in the table after three games.
“When they went down to 10, we probably slowed the game down too much,” Martin told us, speaking to SPURSPLAY after the game. “We weren’t disciplined enough or patient enough in certain moments, and we tried to force the chances.
“In the second half, we readjusted some small things and looked to arrive in certain positions for the final action. Once we did, I think Olivia’s goals were good to see because that’s something we spoke about - getting into those positions. When the first one came, I thought we grew in confidence and mentality, and then we started to really push.
Asked what was said at half-time, he added: “I just said to the group as a whole that I needed to see more of us wanting to get on the end of the chances, wanting to score, wanting to be in the right positions and wanting to win the game.
“Throughout the first half, it was more of us trying to force the chance to score or individually trying to do things. When we put it together as a collective, we’re more dynamic, we get into the right positions, we deliver with good quality and we finish with good quality. It makes a difference.
“We had to readjust a few things, but it was more about the mentality and willingness to get into those positions to finish. The players were outstanding.”
While all the focus will be on the seven magnificent goals we scored, it might go under the radar that we also registered our first clean sheet of the campaign with goalkeeper Lize Kop rarely tested throughout the afternoon.
“You want to make sure that we’re not conceding easy chances,” he said. “I thought in the first half we allowed too many counter-attacks. We weren’t in the right defensive positions to stop their counters.
“Once we got into the right positions in the second half, I thought we nullified the threat. We stopped them from being able to break quickly.
“When you’re playing against 10, it’s obviously a little bit more difficult for them to break, but we just need to be in better positions to stop the attacks higher up and not allow them to come too far. I thought we did that much better in the second half.”