Birmingham City 1-4 Spurs, WSL | Martin Ho’s verdict

Having gone in at half-time 1-0 up thanks to Julie Blakstad’s first goal of the season but seen a number of other chances fall by the wayside, we upped our level after the restart and pushed on to win well, fine finishes from Olivia Holdt and Signe Gaupset putting us firmly in control before Victoria Pelova rounded off the scoring late in the game after Neve Herron had pulled one back for the hosts.

Birmingham also weren’t without their chances and could have had more than the one goal they ended up with at St Andrew’s, but our ruthless performance in the second 45 minutes pleased Head Coach Martin as he reflected on the game at full-time.

“I thought we started well with good intent and ideas in terms of how we wanted to approach the game, and I thought we should’ve gone in at half-time with a very clear lead with the chances we created,” he told SPURSPLAY. “We hit the crossbar, we had some very close ones, even off the line and we gave them some opportunities on the break which we were naïve with at times – we’ve got to be better in those moments to now allow them to get up the pitch that easily on the transition – but then in the second half we came out with a lot more urgency in us, we pushed and scored some really good goals. There was some really good play for Olivia’s free-kick, Signe’s goal, Vic’s goal, so we capitalised well on the chances we had.

“It should’ve been probably more comfortable at half-time with the chances that we had. That’s no disrespect to Birmingham, I just thought we had some big chances that we should convert. We went in with a lead that probably gave us a bit of a cushion but I said to the players that we needed a little bit more urgency, we needed to slightly adapt things tactically, be a little bit more disciplined in certain moments and allow things to happen, and I think in the second half we did. We were ruthless with the chances we had, there was more calmness in the attacking third, we just need to be better in some defensive moments but the biggest part for me was when we had the spell of 10 minutes around the 70 or 75-minute mark when we had to withstand some pressure, I thought we defended in those moments relatively well and that shows the mentality of the group.

“We know we’ve got to be better on the set-play to make sure we don’t concede that chance, but also the mentality of the group to slow the game down, kill the game, defend properly… I think we had a spell in there too where we were down to 10 players for maybe six or seven minutes, so to manage and control that situation was really good and that shows the mentality of the group is growing. We’ve still got a lot of work to do in that area, but I believe with these kinds of moments we have in these situations, when you face that adversity, if we respond in that way, I think we’ll be fine.”