Arsenal 5-2 Spurs, Women's Super League | Martin Ho's verdict

Martin Ho said ‘it gave us a mountain to climb’ as he reflected on the first 10 minutes as we suffered our 5-2 defeat at Arsenal in the Women’s Super League on Saturday evening.

A quickfire double from Alessia Russo – her first coming on five minutes before adding to her tally two minutes later - gave the Gunners a healthy lead in the early stages. We managed to pull a goal back just before the midway point of the first half, Frida Maanum converting into her own net from a corner, but the home side responded shortly after as Russo completed a 22-minute hat-trick.

Similar to last weekend’s performance, we came out with a bit more fight in the second period despite the deficit in the scoreline, but the damage was done on 61 minutes when Caitlin Foord fired home a fourth for Arsenal.

With 12 minutes remaining on the clock, Bethany England stepped off the bench and pulled a goal back for us on her 200th WSL appearance but, as we chased for any potential way back into the contest, Arsenal punished us at the other end as Stina Blackstenius completed the scoring in the fifth minute of stoppage time.

“[In the] first half, we conceded two quick goals and that dented us,” Martin Ho told us, reflecting on the performance with SPURSPLAY. “By doing that, it makes it difficult for you to get back into the game and with small individual passes, we have to be better at that as players.

“For the Lize [Kop] one, I ask her to play a certain way and look for certain passes. When they happen, that's my accountability and my responsibility. I thought we then got back into the game, we got a goal, and then it goes into the second half where we conceded a really cheap goal again, which makes it 4-1. We push back, Bethany gets a goal, really good finish, that's 4-2.

“Then we were pushing the game, we make another individual error and we get punished. I feel like every time we make one at the moment, the ball's going in the net.”

When asked if the first 10 minutes of the game proved to be decisive in the final result, he answered: “Yes, when you give two goals away like we have in those moments, you're going to get punished for them. They have world-class players and then it gives you a bit of a mountain to climb at times.

“I thought we came back into at 2-1, the game was in the balance and the third goes and that kind of then turns it back in their favour. Small moments maybe change games and give you momentum. We just have to look at it, assess it, put it behind us and then focus on the Chelsea game going forward.”

“We can take lots from it in terms of with the ball and large parts of the press without the ball. Our performance, if we take out some of the individual parts, the game would change. We have to make sure we do that because we don't want to be a team and I don't want to be a coach who concedes five goals a game. We're not going to be doing that moving forward.”