Clinical Spurs overwhelm Villa in chaotic seven-goal encounter

Six scorers and instant replies to every setback highlighted Tottenham’s improved conversion rate and emerging mental resilience

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Seven goals, six goalscorers, including every one of the starting front line, three players recording their first goal for the club and five players credited with assists. Tottenham Hotspur’s 7-3 victory over Aston Villa was a chaotic game, but one in which Spurs demonstrated two important things: firstly, this is a team that can finish chances; and secondly, there is belief and mental toughness.

Finishing chances

In the first halves against both West Ham and Chelsea, Spurs created chance after chance – in both games reaching double figures for shots by the half-hour mark. But in both games they were also profligate, with relatively few shots on target and none finding the back of the net before they ceded the advantage – and first goal – to their opponents. Against West Ham it took two worldies from outside the box for Spurs to pull it back; against Chelsea's clinical finishing, Spurs paid the price for not taking those early chances. All of which meant that the team's supporters – and no doubt the manager, Martin Ho – have been desperately seeking confirmation that Spurs' increasingly productive chance creation has teeth.

In this game the lineup was almost the same as the one that started against Chelsea. The one change was Maika Hamano, who had been unable to play against her parent club, coming in for Matilda Vinberg on the right side of attack. As against Chelsea, January signing Julie Blakstad started as a winger in front of Amanda Nildén on the left. This formation means that Ho can fit two ostensible left-backs into the side and has allowed them – both attacking-minded defenders – to overlap while also providing cover for one another. In the first half of this game Blakstad was a constant threat, providing an assist for the first goal. This was scored – and made – by a run from deep by Signe Gaupset, who again played as an eight. Ho has previously said that this is the position he sees the Norwegian in over the longer term, but his use of her in central midfield has more immediately been prompted by Drew Spence's suspension.

The second Spurs goal, a chipped shot, came from captain Bethany England, whose pressing had been causing former England keeper Ellie Roebuck problems from the start. Olivia Holdt provided the assist for that goal before scoring the third, a mirror image of her winner against Villa in the reverse fixture: a shot from a tight angle that went near side of the keeper. This time the Danish playmaker came from the left rather than the right side of goal.

It is a sign of Spurs' deepening attacking strength that Holdt, arguably their standout player so far this season, was substituted at the 67th minute and the pressure was maintained. Indeed, the next goal involved two substitutes: Matilda Vinberg, whose run at goal and shot rebounded out, only for Cathinka Tandberg to send a powerful one-touch strike through the defenders and past the keeper. The fifth started with a ball from Gaupset over the top to Hamano, who initially seemed offside but had started in her own half. The Japan international calmly netted her first for Spurs after rounding the keeper and finding the perfect angle between goal and retreating defenders. Tandberg then got the sixth and her second – another powerful strike, this time from an acute angle – from a Hamano assist, before Blakstad (by then playing as full-back) headed in a Vinberg corner to make it seven.