Southampton 1-3 Spurs | Ho’s verdict: “The response was brilliant”

Martin Ho hailed the importance of building ‘confidence, belief, and motivation’ as we ended pre-season with a 3-1 win at Southampton on Sunday afternoon.

Having behind held to a goalless draw at Sevilla followed by an emphatic win over our north London rivals, Arsenal, we maintained our unbeaten run throughout pre-season with another positive performance on the south coast to overcome the Women’s Super League 2 side.

Martha Thomas fired us ahead in the first period, converting Kit Graham’s low cross into the box, but her opener was cancelled out nine minutes after the restart through the hosts’ Atlanta Primus.

However, we responded well and restored our lead (62) after a fantastic run by Jess Naz before it was calmly converted by our number seven. Olivia Holdt then drilled home from inside the box (73) after clever footwork inside the box, as we continue positive momentum ahead of our WSL season opener at home to West Ham United next Sunday.

 “I thought for large parts, we controlled with the ball, sometimes we didn’t progress well enough, but once we started to get in a rhythm in the second half, we were ruthless and started to put passes together,” Martin told us, reflecting on the game.

“The link-up play in the middle was nice to watch and then there were moments when we got behind and threatened them in the space so, overall, it’s a good workout for us, the last one of pre-season to go into a new week leading to West Ham.”

Martin on having three different goalscorers on the scoresheet…

“It's more about how we can have different goalscorers, importantly, how we can score more and we probably should have, to be honest. But it’s good to see the impact of the players coming in, which doesn’t change the game much, and more importantly, it’s good to see the players who have gone through the whole game perform well.”

Martin on the response after the equaliser…

“It’s about mentality when you concede a goal and you end up at 1-1, I think the response is key, the character and personality you show in those moments to make sure you overcome that, and we did that. We’re going to make those mistakes, individually and collectively, and that lies with me as we’re trying to be brave with the ball, trying to control the game, but the response was brilliant.”

Martin on building positive momentum ahead of the season opener….

It's really important [the positive momentum] because you want to go into the season with confidence, belief and motivation… I think we do. The playing style is starting to show and more importantly, we’re starting to build relationships on the pitch and everyone is starting to push the game. This build competition which is good and gives me a bit of a headache going into the first game, which I need as a Head Coach, and hopefully we go into this week really positive.”