Manchester United v Spurs Women - Karen and Juan's preview

This weekend sees the two Barclays FA Women’s Super League (WSL) newcomers come head-to-head once again as Spurs Women travel to the north-west to take on Manchester United, kick-off on Sunday (19 January) is 12pm at Leigh Sports Village.

In our last meeting with the Red Devils in October, we suffered our first home league defeat and despite creating just as many chances as United, and edging it in possession, sloppy errors in defence proved to be costly as we lost out 3-0 at The Hive.

Following last weekend’s dramatic London derby win against West Ham, and our first three points of the year, we’re heading into Sunday’s match in high spirits, but as are the hosts, who secured a place in the semi-final of the Continental League Cup after defeating Brighton & Hove Albion 2-1 on Wednesday (15 January).

“Our matches against them have always been very challenging because they have a lot of experience and quality in their side,” Head Coach Juan Amoros said ahead of our second meeting of the season with Casey Stoney’s side, who sit one point below us in the league in sixth, with two games in hand.

“They are a physical team with lots of technical ability. Unfortunately, our previous encounters with them have all gone in their favour but we’ll work really hard to make sure we have a different outcome on Sunday.

“Every time you get a good win, like we did against West Ham last weekend, you’re in a positive environment and have a positive mindset. Having that winning mentality paid off with the way in which we won that game and it’s definitely had a positive impact during training this week.

“We just go and try and play every game like it’s a final and try to make our fans proud, so we’ll go there to play our game and defend the badge and make sure we come away with a positive performance and I know the girls are ready and up for it.

“We’ll need to work extremely hard on Sunday and make sure that our game plan is executed perfectly and I’m pretty sure we'll be able to show our strengths in what will be a great game."

Head Coach Karen Hills commented: “Both sides have improved since being promoted and for us, there has been a significant improvement following our transition from playing semi-professional football last season. Both teams have shown that they can compete in this division and we’re both in good positions in the league and that shows what we are capable of.

“We know United are a top team and we know they’re going to be favourites to win the game, however we believe that we can match any team and we have got a strong mentality of winning and we’ve got players here that want to be winners. Yes, it’s going to be tough, especially playing away from home and we know they get some amazing attendances, but when we play away, we’ve shown that we thrive when we’re up against it.

“On Sunday, we’ll need to be aggressive, take our chances and to be clinical in the final third. We need to make sure that we defend in numbers and put bodies behind the ball. We can’t allow United to take control of the game, we need to try and take the game to them.”