“I think she can be the best player in the world’ – Martin Ho on Tottenham win
· Yahoo Sports
Tottenham got off to a positive start of their season with a 3-1 win over West Ham, with goals from youngster Signe Gaupset and Kirsty Hanson on her Spurs debut.
Visit rouesnews.click for more information.
Manager Martin Ho was especially pleased with Gaupset’s performance and said that with the right work rate and mentality, the 21-year-old midfielder has the quality to reach the top.
He said: “She’s struggling with a few niggles at the moment but we’ve managed her to play in a higher position – when she’s usually lower in the double pivot – and she opened the game and stretched the game really well.
“I think the level she can get to depends on how hard she wants to work and where she wants to go. I don’t believe there’s any ceiling on what she can achieve. She’s twenty-one, she’s already achieved a lot now, in my opinion I think she can be the best in the world.”
Ho was also full of praise for Scotland striker Kirsty Hanson who bagged a double on her Spurs debut.
“Kirsty scored two wonderful goals. The first was outstanding in terms of movement into that position, and the second one [was what] she’s good at in terms of creating half a yard and the ability to put it into the top corner away from the keeper,” he said.
The team had an uncertain start to the game but soon found their feet with Gaupset’s goal in the 18th minute opening up the floodgates for attack. Spurs registered twenty shots and eight shots on target in the game.
They were robbed of a clean sheet, however, as West Ham’s Viviane Asseyi clinched a consolatory goal in stoppage time.
Ho said: “In that last one we lost concentration and didn’t defend right in that moment and we conceded. Against anybody, as I’ve said before, in this league, if you switch off for a moment you get punished.”
Spurs looked like a transformed team in their first match of the season, with a relentless press and physicality that allowed them to react quickly to first and second balls.
This makeover didn’t happen overnight though.
“Ask them how they felt after pre-season!” Ho laughed. “We had a full pre-season, where we could plan it out and map it properly. We had some real real tough weeks in that pre-season but these are the moments where you now benefit,”
“But we’ve got to maintain that now,” he added.
Despite the rigidity of the pre-season workout schedule, Ho highlighted the importance of improvisation and unpredictability in his team’s style of play.
“Certain players on certain parts of the pitch have more freedom to loosen up and change more and be more flexible, and when you do that it’s more difficult for the opposition to pick up,” he said.
Tottenham face Liverpool next weekend and will hope to carry both the confidence and positives from this game into the next.
“We played diagonally, we played vertically when we had to, to go behind them, and we’ve got the speed and momentum to go that way now which is important. I thought our pressure high was good when we were closing them down.”
“We need to manage those moments defensively and we can take a lot of confidence going into Liverpool.”