Rehanne Skinner admitted her side are not at the stage she would have envisaged going into the midway point of the league season and admitted honing a mental resilience in their game will prove critical if they are to keep themselves from being cut adrift from the top half.
Spurs fell to their fifth league defeat of the season in a 2-0 home loss to London rivals West Ham on Sunday afternoon, but it was the manner of the loss that felt most telling of the squad’s hitherto evolution this season.
Not for the first time, finding the back of the net proved problematic despite a dominant and fluid first-half performance. Goal-scoring opportunities arose first through Eveliina Summanen, followed swiftly by Drew Spence, Ubogagu Chioma, Rosella Ayane and Molly Bartrip, whose corner-cum-shot was saved agonisingly well by an inspired Mackenzie Arnold for the Irons on the half-hour mark.
The relentless profligacy nearly came to haunt before the end of the first 45, when Kerys Harrop was adjudged to have brought down Kate Longhurst in the area after the midfielder dispossessed the Spurs veteran, but skipper Dagný Brynjarsdóttir failed to convert a gilt-edged chance entirely against the run of play.
Even so, Spurs failed to heed the warning, and three minutes into the second half, a newly-charged West Ham took the lead through Brynjarsdóttir before sealing the victory in the 85th minute through Hawa Cissoko’s chipped effort.
The second-half drop-off epitomised the disjointed performances that have plagued Skinner’s side this season, and the Spurs boss admitted that progression will be marked when more consistency is applied.
“We said from the start we wanted to be better than we were last year,” Skinner said. “There is still a long way to go in the season. I don’t think we’re exactly where we want to be right now. I think obviously in terms of performances being up and down, exceptional at times and not necessarily getting the result when we’ve done that.
"But then dropping off last week, it wasn’t good enough for us so we have to get some level of consistency in our performances and then I’ll be feeling like we’re moving forward a little bit more in the right direction.”
She added: “Ultimately we’d done a lot of things right in the first half so we wanted to keep that going in the second. But we started too slow, too complacent and essentially we got what we deserved.”
Despite some half-decent chances in the second half and a slew of attacking substitutions in Jessica Naz, Ashleigh Neville and Nikola Karczewska, a goal continued to prove elusive. Another loss without response marked the first time in their WSL history that Spurs failed to score in three successive matches.
The plethora of subs afforded Skinner was a luxury she has not often relished this season, with manifold players struggling with injury. Still, the growing frustration within the squad as they doggedly hunted for an equaliser at Brisbane Road was nearly palpable. Skinner acknowledged that such frustration is inevitable but pushing through it could dictate their league future.
"It’s good that we’ve got players coming back in that are more available to us now that weren’t necessarily for the biggest chunk of the season," Skinner admitted. "We just need to make sure that whoever is in that role, wide players as well, we’re essentially just being more effective in the final third.
“We’ve got a good squad, we’re just not pulling it together in key moments in the game and that’s something that has obviously caused us a few problems and it’s something that we’re trying to work on.
“We’ve obviously had an opportunity with Brighton where it clicked and in training it’s really positive all the time and it’s just not converting over. A little bit of frustration creeps in naturally with players the longer a game goes on, but it’s just something we have to keep building a mental capacity for.
“That happens in games and you just have to keep believing until the end and I think once we get to that point we’ll be in a much better position."
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