Emma Mitchell hoping to build on positive start to life with Spurs

New recruit Emma Mitchell has made a promising start to her loan spell at Spurs Women after getting off the mark during her full debut in our win against West Ham at home on Sunday (12 January).

There was plenty to smile about following our thrilling London derby victory as we made it two league wins out of two against the Hammers and moved up to fifth in the Barclays FA Women’s Super League (WSL) with our first three points of the year.  

And fans at The Hive got to see our new signing mark her first start for the Club last weekend with a cracking goal in the first half to give us the lead against Matt Beard’s side.

Following her first 90 minutes in Spurs colours, the 27-year-old said: “I think there’s always that apprehension when you come in to a new team, but it’s been a positive start for me and I just need to build on that, and my confidence. It was a really good feeling to score my first goal on my full debut. We spoke in the week about set pieces and how we could exploit West Ham and we saw that Siri (Worm) scored a great goal against Reading before Christmas, so I thought I’d try my luck and I was happy to see it go in at the bottom corner. I’ve been really working hard on my fitness and that’s allowed me to get higher up the field and if I’m able to get into the box on a regular basis and create chances for the team then I’ll be happy with that.”

The Scottish international, who joined us on loan from Arsenal at the beginning of the month, enjoyed playing in what was our first-ever London derby at The Hive and it proved to be another blockbuster against the Hammers with dramatic injury-time scenes after Rianna Dean scored the winning goal in the 96^th minute.

“You could see from the reaction of the girls how much the win meant, and it was a massive three points for the Club,” Emma continued. “After doing our analysis after the game, we know we should have scored some more goals and we could have been in control a lot more but it’s another derby, we knew what to expect from West Ham, they’re always going to be physical and put a challenge in and I thought we handled that really well on Sunday. It was one of those games where it was always going to be late tackles, especially with the condition of the pitch and the nine minutes of added time. We knew we had it in us to go and win and it always makes it a little more special in a derby when you win it at the death.”

Looking ahead to Manchester United away at the weekend, Emma, who played against the Red Devils in the Continental League Cup semi-final last season while at the Gunners, commented: “I remember coming up against United last season, they gave us a really difficult game and they’ve started in the WSL really well. We’re probably seen us the underdogs going into this game but that may work in our favour and I feel that if we just keep building on our performances in the second half against City and West Ham, then hopefully we can come away with a positive result.”