Presser Points | Man City vs Spurs (WSL) | Robert Vilahamn | OneFootball

Robert Vilahamn spoke to the media at Hotspur Way ahead of our Barclays Women’s Super League fixture against Manchester City at Etihad Stadium on Friday night (7.30pm UK, live on Sky Sports).

Here’s what he had to say…

On reaction from players

First up for Robert, he was asked about the second half come back against West Ham and the reaction he saw from his players…

Robert: “In most of the games since I came to this Club, the team has shown that they’re not giving up, they’ll keep pushing and are finding ways to get back in games. We’ve had a few games where we conceded too many goals in a short period of time, especially in the games leading to the match. So, that's the attitude we had, we showed that against West Ham and that’s the attitude I'm expecting from the players, that's the thing we want to bring tomorrow because we know that's going to be a tough game, of course, but we also know that we are a strong team that can win this game."

Previous encounters against City

Robert was asked about the learnings from last season’s visit to City…

Robert: “I learnt a lot from that game. One thing was that we could play against some really good teams in this league with good individual players but, if you don't defend together against these teams, they can beat you one-on-one and score a lot of nice goals. So, collectively, we've learned a lot how we need to make sure we stick together and make sure we defend together. Tactically, we learned how they play because we've played them a few times last season. They’re a winning machine that keeps winning and winning so we also need to make sure that we go to this game and dare to play our style, but respect City and defend well. If you're going to have a chance to win this game, we need to have a perfect defensive game, be very clear with the chances we're going to get, so we cannot expect us to dictate this game. We need to make sure that we’re very good in transitions collectively, defending well, and finding the right press triggers to make sure we can hurt them in in some phases of the game.”

Becky Spencer

The experienced goalkeeper signed a new deal with the Club until June 2026 earlier this week and Robert was asked about the importance of that…

Robert: “Becky is a goalkeeper with great experience and is a great, great goalkeeper with good personality that we want to keep in the Club and around us. She has the identity of how we want to play in possession, she also has a personality that we like and she's very brave. So, for me, to keep working with her and we can use her for two more years - that's great news.”

Khadija Shaw

Robert was then posed with the question about dealing with the threat of Khadija Shaw…

Robert: “We experienced her in the away game last season and how good she can be, how dominant she can be, and I've seen the start of this season how she can score these amazing goals for them to make sure they win games, but we’ve also experienced how we managed her in the home game. She's probably the best nine in the league and she's probably one of the best nines in the world, so you need to defend with a lot of players around her because she's so strong, so powerful, but we have done it before. We're going to really go for it and make sure we try to close her down.”

On being more clinical

Robert was asked about converting chances in the game…

Robert: “It's a mixture of making sure we make better decisions before we get to this point, so we get the time we need, and then it's a mixture of self-confidence. When you get the first goal, you normally can do the second one as well, we’ve practiced finishing and technique as well. But the main thing, even if they score own goals for us, it's connected to how we want to score in those spaces so, hopefully, we can be a little clearer in those chances and make sure we get some more goals.”

Watch - Robert Vilahamn speaks to the media