A few weeks ago, Tottenham were riding high and living life among the WSL’s elite.
Manager Martin Ho’s side had won three of their opening four games, scoring 15 goals and conceding just two.
Smash cut to mid-October and Spurs are heading into the north London derby having conceded 12 goals across two crushing defeats to London City Lionesses and Chelsea. They remain fourth in the table, but the gap to London City, Chelsea and Manchester City has grown.
Spurs can be forgiven for losing against title-chasing Chelsea and a stacked London City side, but fans are rightfully worried about the manner of those defeats — games that suddenly went from finely poised to embarrassing.
Last week’s 6-2 defeat to Chelsea created fear among the Spurs faithful ahead of Saturday’s derby, but Ho believes there’s no need to panic and calls for patience with a young team that he believes is building toward something special.
“I think [the difference between] everyone’s expectations from last year to now is that we finished fifth, so [now] they expect us to finish in the top three, and we should be competing for this and this,” he tells The Cutback.
“We’re 15, 16 months into a totally different direction, a journey that the club want to go on. And if we want to be where those teams are — like Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United, London City — then we have to take time to build this in a sustainable way.
