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Ahead of Spurs’ weekend trip up north to Manchester City, boss Rehanne Skinner says the whole team “feels they’re close to a result” with Spurs still chasing their first win of 2023 and their first win in eight, since the eight goal thrashing of Brighton and Hove Albion at the back end of October.

Specifying the last three games; a penalty shootout loss to Reading in the FA Cup, the 2-1 defeat to Manchester United at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and the 3-2 defeat to Chelsea, Skinner said, "it’s felt within the entire team, everyone feels they’re contributing to a way that plays to their strengths and causes issues for the other teams. We’ve scored goals in those games against (Man) United and Chelsea and it’s just the fine margins we aren’t just quite getting over the line at the moment."

The trouble for Spurs is that fine margins are often a key deciding factor within football, especially when you are slugging it out at the bottom of the league, and with bottom club Leicester having cut the gap to safety to just three points. All in Lillywhite will be looking over their shoulder precariously if they don’t start quickly picking up points.

Team News for Spurs is also something the fans will be keeping an eye out for, with Skinner confirming that she’s “hoping to have Bethany England back for the weekend” after the star forward suffered an injury in the defeat to Manchester United. A couple of positives for Spurs will be the return of Cho So-hyun to the squad, who is one appearance shy of 50 WSL career appearances, and the return to the pitch of Kit Graham, after she had been out since November 2021 with a ACL injury. 

On Graham’s return, Skinner added “i’m delighted for her, it’s been such a long process and she’s worked so so hard, I am incredibly proud of her. Even since she’s been back in training she just lifts the energy of what we do and the competitiveness of it, it’s a positive for the whole team.”

It embodies the team spirit that Rehanne has built at Spurs too, with the boss saying “I think it tells you everything when every single member of the squad, injured or not was at the game because they thought that she (Kit) was going to be able to get back on the grass at the weekend. I think that tells you how well she is thought of within the group."

On the challenge that the Citizens pose, “every game we have is a tough game, the result we have has eluded to us and we need to try and get it back on track, it’s not going to be easy to do this weekend at all, but we’ll get results sooner rather than later, whether its this weekend or not, we’re going to travel to Manchester to make life really difficult for them and try and get points out of the game, that’s the focus for us”. 

Tottenham Hotspur face Manchester City on Sunday at 2pm (GMT) at the Academy Stadium.