Chelsea vs Spurs (WSL) | Robert’s preview: “I’ve been waiting for this!”
Sun 01 October 2023, 12:01|
Tottenham Hotspur
A new era begins for our women’s first team today (Sunday 1 October, 5.30pm UK) as Robert Vilahamn takes charge of his first competitive game as our Head Coach when we travel to Stamford Bridge to face Chelsea.
It’s a repeat opening-day fixture from our first-ever Women’s Super League campaign in 2019/20, but much has changed since then and there’s a renewed sense of excitement as we prepare to lock horns with our London rivals once more.
For Robert, appointed over the summer after a spell at BK Häcken, this marks the beginning of a process for us.
“I’ve been waiting for this week, and this is a really good first game to get,” he told SPURSPLAY. “It’s been seven weeks of good training, a lot of training and now we’re finally here, so I’m really looking forward to this game. Sometimes, when you come into a team, they’ve been on a break, coming back, you get a pre-season with them, and that’s the way you want to do it. You start working on the game model, how you’re going to behave, and you still have those weeks before you win or lose a game, so it’s been good weeks (in pre-season), a bit tricky with the World Cup and players back and forth, but we’ve had some good weeks, we’ve taken steps and now I kind of need the games to know where we’re going, where we are, how we can improve. It’s a good time for us to have this first game.
Away against Chelsea is the toughest game of the season, I would say. We need to have a really good game plan.
“For us, this season is to build an identity, how we’re going to play. In one way, it’s good because we work every week on becoming better at the game model. The first thing is that we build a way of playing that fits the Tottenham style. We win or lose in the beginning – and we want to win, right? – but we have to make sure we take steps in how we perform. Then, after a while, we need to look at how many points we have and where we aim for. We don’t have to talk about top three, top six at this stage, we talk about how we play good football against Chelsea, then how we improve and when we come to Christmas, we can see how many points we have and then we can put up a goal as to where we finish in the table. Of course, we want to be up there, but it’s how we get up there, because we need to play better football.”
What does Robert expect from our opponents today?
“When you look at Chelsea… I watched their game against Roma in pre-season, they have so many good players and they can play in certain styles, certain formations. They are quite hard to actually analyse, because they do different things in different phases of the game. They have quality players in each position. Of course, away against Chelsea is the toughest game of the season, I would say. We need to have a really good game plan, work really hard, accept that we will not dictate the game the whole time, but we have a plan and hopefully we will succeed.”
