Spurs 1-2 Aston Villa (WSL) | Robert’s verdict: “It’s a tough loss” | OneFootball

Robert Vilahamn admitted it was a ‘tough loss’ as we suffered a 2-1 defeat to Aston Villa in the Barclays Women’s Super League on Sunday afternoon.

After quite an even encounter in the opening stages at Brisbane Road, it was the visitors who took the lead in the 23rd minute as Adriana Leon picked up the ball just inside our half, advanced into the box before slotting the ball past Barbora Votikova.

Robert felt the first half performance was ‘not good enough’ but we managed to grab an equaliser in the closing minutes of the half, Amy James-Turner heading home Eveliina Summanen’s free-kick to score her first-ever goal in the WSL.

Despite a positive start after the break, with Bethany England and Martha Thomas both going close, Jordan Nobbs provided a sucker-punch as her effort from the edge of the box found the top corner and restored their lead on the hour mark.

We pushed for an equaliser, Daphne van Damselaar denying Jess Naz with a strong hand and Kit Graham narrowly off-target on a few occasions, but failed to break down a resilient Villa defence in the final quarter of the game.

Speaking in his post-match interview with SPURSPLAY, Robert said: “It’s a tough loss, the first half was not good enough. We didn’t really nail on how we were going to press them and we didn’t get playing the way we wanted to, then they scored a goal in the early stages.

“But we came back and got it back to 1-1, which felt quite good from that half. The second half was much better, we nailed the press and played much better football, but they scored from a set-piece and that killed the momentum in that moment.

“At the beginning of the second half, I felt we actually went for it and you could hear the fans were with us, we wanted to show that we could play attacking football and go for it. I had a feeling we were going to do that. However, their goal came from nothing, so we need to do better.”

With no game scheduled for a fortnight due to February’s international break, Robert will use the time to reflect on a disappointing afternoon at Brisbane Road and prepare ahead of our next WSL fixture – the north London derby against Arsenal at Emirates Stadium.

“We need to analyse every game we play – whether we win or lose – and react in the same way so we will do that. We will train very hard over these next two weeks because we can use that time to get them better and then, obviously, it’s the north London derby so we will need to prepare for that.”

Watch - Vilahamn reflects on 'tough loss' despite improved second half against Aston Villa