Running Uphill

I don't know about y'all, but I still haven't quite recovered from the emotional turmoil of the last thirty minutes or so of Spurs Women's 3-3 draw at Manchester United. It didn't help that Spurs Men had already suffered a heavy loss in their concurrent match, but that PL game didn't have nearly the same level of stakes as the WSL match did (it's sad how unsurprised and unbothered I can be about a loss for this iteration of Spurs Men under Thomas Frank, but that's where we are).

There can be no doubt that we have a real rivalry with Manchester United on the women's side of the game, although the foundation of that rivalry remains more personal than practical, despite earning our third-ever draw against them in league play. The disparity in squad depth was a determining factor in seeing the 0-3 lead slip away in the second half and will continue to keep us at arm's length from United until we get a chance to bridge the gap with future transfer windows.

In this issue: Nottingham Forest recap | Manchester United recap | News from around the Lane

The next chapter in the rivalry will take place this weekend, ready or not. And the result matters for more than just bragging rights; it's a knockout quarter-final match in the League Cup. It would be perfect timing to get our first-ever win over Manchester United. I don't think that outcome is particularly likely, since we enter the game with the same injury constraints and limited ability for Martin Ho to make in-game changes, but that will just make it all the more sweet if we pull it off.

But before that fraught rematch, we must survive the Men's clash against Liverpool. Will it actually be a competitive encounter or another whimper of a loss? We shall see. Again, nothing has changed squad-wise, so it's up to Thomas Frank to find some solutions. Apparently, this is the highest-scoring fixture in Premier League history, so it's probably a safe bet to expect an entertaining amount of goals.

PL MD 16 | Nottingham Forest 3 - 0 Tottenham

Hudson-Odoi 28' • 50', Sangaré 79'

I'll be totally candid, I didn't pay a lick of attention to this game after the first goal went in (partially from frustration, but mostly because I was more invested in the Women's game. And I'm not the type to watch a replay that I know is only going to disappoint me. So... the Men's team lost. It wasn't good. That's all I have to say.

Except, I do have one request: let's give Archie Gray and Guglielmo Vicario both a break. Was it a bad mistake? Yes. But a mistake nevertheless. As I start to lean more towards the perspective that Thomas Frank is probably not going to work out at Spurs, I'm increasingly convinced that we need to give the players some grace and hope that they can turn things around under the next manager, whoever and whenever that may be. You only have to look at the season the Women's team are having to see how quickly the (largely) same group of players can suddenly improve.

Notable & quotable:

• Thomas Frank is going through it:

It's hugely annoying, burning inside... I had such a good feeling going into this game, then we deliver this performance, which is not good enough. It's a bad performance, overall.

WSL MD 11 | Manchester United 3 - 3 Tottenham

Toone 74', Rolfö 82' • 90+4' | England 37', Summanen 45+2', Thomas 62'

This was one of those games where I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing—first in joy, but ending in despair. And it really did take me a while to get over it. Lingering disappointment is a familiar sports experience that has honestly been far less familiar on the Men's side of things this season, but has already come up a few times with the Women's fixtures. And that's because I am slowly but surely getting to the point where I do expect strong performances from this team, as well as the proper mentality to see out results.

I don't believe it was a loss of mentality that caused them to drop points from a winning position against Manchester United; instead, it was a case of injury constraints truly affecting the outcome. We need a squad that's deep enough (and healthy enough) to withstand a difficult 90 minutes, but also to not be so vulnerable in the final 90 seconds of games (h/t to Lauren on Hometown Glory for pointing out, painfully, just how close we were to a 2-3 win).

We simply didn't have the bench to fully compete with United in the closing stages of the game, both in a literal sense, numbers-wise, and in terms of personnel. Only five of our seven available substitutes were outfield players, and of those five, three were defenders, and the other two have zero WSL starts between them this season—which is to say, they haven't had much game time. I suspect there could also be some fitness concerns that caused Martin Ho to be overly cautious and keep those attacking players on the bench; we can't afford further injuries in the squad, even with just one game to go before the winter break (albeit a very important one).

If we want to further speculate, it's possible Ho had to make a calculation about which game to prioritize since we play United back-to-back, with the second match arguably the more important since it's a cup knockout quarter-final. If he felt he could only throw the full (well, not quite full, at the moment) weight of the squad behind just one game, it would make sense to wait for the cup game.

Unfortunately, United do have a pretty deep squad despite a few injuries of their own, and were able to bring on a player of Fridolina Rolfö's caliber to turn the game state around in their favor. Interestingly, though, Marc Skinner opted to only make two subs of his own, compared to just one for Ho (Molly Bartrip in for Beth England, a decidedly defensive substitution). Skinner did have the additional benefit of having rotated his team midweek when they played in the Champions League, and several of those players who had limited game time against OL Lyonnes made a big impact in this game, like Dominique Janssen and Ella Toone.

On the flip side, United played again in the CL this past midweek (a 0-1 win at Juventus), and Melvine Malard started across all three of these fixtures. She was a constant attacking threat against Spurs despite not getting on the scoresheet, so it would be a bit of a relief if she wasn't able to start in the cup quarter-final.

Now that I've covered all of the negative aspects of the game for Spurs, I do need to acknowledge that we scored three great goals and gave ourselves a fighting chance of holding on to a result, despite the obstacles. Olivia Holdt looked a bit embarrassed to receive the Player of the Match award after the game, but in my eyes, she truly deserved it for her two assists. All but one of our starting forwards got onto the scoresheet, with Beth England and Martha Thomas both building on their recent goalscoring form; England has scored in the last two WSL games, while Thomas has two goals in the last three games in all competitions. I was also encouraged to see Ash Neville getting involved in the attack, as we more commonly saw prior to the Robert Vilahamn era of the team.

Having a variety of goal scorers across the season already, as well as a variety of goal-scoring strategies (although the first two goals in this game were both headers from crosses), bodes well for the sustainability of the attack in the second half of the season.

If I have time post-Christmas, I'll write a mid-season review and get into some more takeaways from what has unequivocally been an encouraging start to Spurs Women's first season under Martin Ho. But for now, suffice it to say that it's actually a good sign that so many of us were disappointed to draw with Manchester United at their home ground. We're starting to believe we can compete with any team in the league on our day.

This obviously wasn't our day because of the surplus of players we were missing (imagine bringing Cathinka Tandberg off the bench to wreak havoc on United's backline!), and it will likely be the same scenario on Sunday, but after a transfer window and the healing power of time, the reverse league fixture could be a different story. Hopefully Martin and the players can finish what they started here in this game.

Notable & quotable:

• Drew Spence made her 200th Women's Super League appearance. 63 of those appearances came with Tottenham Hotspur. She is only the sixth player to ever reach that milestone in the league.

• These were the first two assists of the WSL season for Olivia Holdt, and the first for Ash Neville.

• This was Martha Thomas' first WSL goal since her memorable game-winner against Arsenal in December 2023, almost two full calendar years ago. Regardless, it was nice to see the knee slide celebration again.

• After noting the clinical finishing from Spurs earlier in the game, Amanda Nildén expressed frustration about the result, but insisted there is a persistent feeling of optimism across the team:

We’re progressing every day. I feel we have more to come and it’s so fun to play football right now. I hope we can keep going like this, take steps every game and improve. It’s good for us to learn from conceding late, and next week there’s another game, so we go again.

And to that point, there is extra motivation for this weekend's rematch:

Conceding so late gives us motivation to come back with revenge and show again that we can play good football like we did in the first half. I’m excited for that game and we definitely have a lot more to come.

• Martin Ho was proud of the team effort:

You never want to concede three goals—the players don’t and I don’t either, but when you’re playing against the top teams, they push you right to the end. We’ve had injuries, but that’s not an excuse. We have a good enough squad and the players have given me everything. I’m gutted we couldn’t get it over the line. We can take a lot of pride from this and we’ve taken big steps. We’ve grown as a team and come here to push Manchester United on their own patch.

News from around the Lane

• Spurs Women have been drawn at home to Leicester City in the FA Cup fourth round. The match will take place the weekend of January 18, but we don't have confirmation of the exact date and kickoff time yet.

• Olivia Holdt has been nominated for Women's Super League Player of the Month for December. Vote here!

• I appreciated this reminder from the club about the upcoming AFCON player absences, though Pape Sarr is really the only notable one. The cup runs from December 21 to January 18, and Sarr's Senegal are likely to make it quite deep into the tournament, if not to the final outright, so don't expect him to be back early.

• On loan army watch, Anna Csiki scored the first WSL goal of her career, striking second for West Ham United in their 2-2 draw against Liverpool.

Up next:

December 20 | Spurs Men vs Liverpool
Team news — no change to availability from the Nottingham Forest game, except that Pape Sarr has already left for AFCON duty

September 20 | Spurs Women @ Manchester United
Team news — no change to availability from the previous United game

Broadcast note: The match will be available to stream here on the WSL YouTube channel.

I feel a bit nauseous thinking about this weekend's fixtures, but we'll get through them. And this time next week, we'll be lamenting the lack of Spurs Women until mid-January!

COYS

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