West Ham v Spurs Women - Karen and Juan's preview

The next challenge for Spurs Women comes in the Continental League Cup this Sunday (20 October) as we play West Ham in our second game of Group D - kick-off is 3pm at Rush Green Stadium.

Having already played Reading in our opening game of the group, we take on Matt Beard’s side for the second time this season after defeating them away in the FA Women’s Super League (WSL) in September.

We’ll also face Crystal Palace, Chelsea and Lewes in the next two months in Group D.

After a disappointing loss in the league to Manchester United last weekend, Head Coach Juan Amoros says the players have reacted well in training and hopes to see a positive response in Sunday’s cup game.

“The girls have been fantastic in training this week,” Juan commented. “Sometimes you win games, sometimes you lose them, but it’s always important to analyse the performance, look at what you need to improve and build on the positives.

“I think our players have the right mindset and they are a strong group of people. Losing matches is part of the game, it’s all about the reaction following defeat and we are very pleased with the players’ attitude in training.”

Head Coach Karen Hills added: “The girls are very self-critical after a loss, so we’ve been working on building up the confidence again. We’ve looked at what we need to do and now we feel ready and focussed for the game on Sunday. The games are coming thick and fast so it’s important for us not to dwell on a defeat.

“We take every game seriously and at the end of the day, we’re professional and we want to win every game we play in. It may not be a league game that we’re playing in front of 25,000 people but that makes no difference to us as we prepare for this game in the same way as all the others – our mentality is always to win.”

Our first encounter with the Hammers this season ended in a 2-0 victory at the London Stadium in front of nearly 25,000 fans – Rianna Dean and Lucy Quinn provided the goals in the historic London derby win.

“I know we got a brilliant win against them at the London Stadium but there were also points we needed to improve on from that game,” Juan said. “Of course, we’ve had to change a few things leading up to this game and that’s important because we’ve played them twice in recent times - in pre-season and a few weeks ago. The teams are very familiar with each other and if you want to win games then you can’t be static.

“Karen and I always have tough decisions to make when it comes to selecting the team and every week is a new opportunity for players to earn their right to go out and play in the Tottenham Hotspur shirt. We gave Megan Wynne her WSL debut last week because she has been working hard and those opportunities to get some minutes are available to all the players who put the hard work in.”