Emphatic first win of the season for Spurs Women
Spurs Women got off to a flying start in the 2020/21 Continental League Cup with a 4-0 victory at The Hive against London City Lionesses in Group B on Wednesday afternoon (7 October).
Ria Percival, Alanna Kennedy and Rosella Ayane gave us a comfortable lead in the first half, before half-time substitute Angela Addison netted our fourth goal to seal our first victory of the season.
Karen Hills and Juan Amoros made two changes to the side that lost 4-1 at Manchester City last weekend with Ayane starting ahead of Rianna Dean in attack while Hannah Godfrey came in for Siri Worm in defence.
Percival, who was playing on the right wing, fired us ahead after 12 minutes with a clean strike from inside the box, firing the ball into the roof of the net, after the Lionesses cleared Ayane’s low cross into the path of the New Zealand international for her first competitive goal for the Club.
Seventeen minutes later, Kennedy doubled our lead, scoring her first goal for the Club since she arrived in the summer, with an exquisite free-kick drilled into the bottom left corner after Percival was fouled by Harley Bennett.
With 10 minutes remaining in the first half, Ayane extended our advantage with a composed finish past Shae Yanez, following a delightful through ball from Kit Graham.
With another fixture to come in three days against Manchester United in the league, Karen and Juan made four changes at the break.
Becky Spencer, who registered her first clean sheet of the season, made a great save to deny Juliette Kemppi, who was through on goal for the visitors, before Lucia Leon rattled the crossbar from a tight angle.
Addison wrapped up our victory in Group B with eight minutes to go when she converted Ashleigh Neville’s cross into the back of the net, to round off the scoring.
Coach’s view
Head Coach Karen Hills was pleased to see another committed performance finally yield a positive result after a tricky start to the season had seen us go four games without a win: “It was coming!” she said. “We’ve had a tough run but this was all about us having a performance that we can be proud of, having a little bit of confidence and I thought the girls were excellent today and thoroughly deserved that win. I thought the intensity that we set in the first half was excellent, we were on the front foot, we were aggressive in the final third, created lots of opportunities and overall we were really pleased with how we set our stall out in the opening half and then carried that on in the second.
“We’ve had a tough run, but this game was an opportunity for us to try to be a bit more dominant on the ball and hopefully create more opportunities to score some goals. Fortunately in the end it panned out in that manner which was really pleasing to see and hopefully we’ll move on, build on this performance and take this momentum into the game against Manchester United.”
Match data
Goals: Spurs – Percival 12, Kennedy 29, Ayane 35, Addison 82.
Yellow cards: Spurs – Godfrey 71; London City Lionesses – Bennett 28.
Referee: Sarah Garratt.
Venue: The Hive.
Weather: Partly cloudy, 16 degrees.
Attendance: Behind closed doors.