Ashleigh Neville became the first Tottenham Hotspur player to make 100 appearances for the club in the Women's Super League when she lined up against Arsenal on Sunday but the day ended in disappointment.
The 31-year-old arrived at the club back in 2017 and was part of the squad that first earned promotion to the WSL in 2019. On Sunday, Neville not only recorded her 100th appearance in the league, but it also marked her 171st in all competitions for the north London outfit.
Unfortunately, the day ended with a heavy 5-0 defeat at the Emirates Stadium with Spurs finding themselves two goals behind at the break through Alessia Russo’s deflected header and Mariona Caldentey's effort. Arsenal goals from Frida Maanum, Russo and Emily Fox in the second half sealed the hosts' dominant victory.
"It’s a difficult one to take," said Neville. "We knew it would be a tough game but to concede five goals, we know that’s not good enough. We will come back after the international break, when all the girls are back, and look at that, but it just wasn’t good enough from us.
"It wasn’t an early goal but we had a conversation that if we conceded, we are still in the game, 1-0 isn’t the end of the world, but then we conceded a second and we just couldn’t find the momentum from then on. They are a great team, we can’t take that away from them, but we just weren’t great."
On reaching 100 WSL appearances, she added: "It’s a proud moment and especially being the first Spurs player to do that, I’m really proud of that. It’s not the result we wanted, but we go again for the next game.
"We have Manchester City after the international break, so the girls will go away with their countries, some of the girls will stay here and work, and we will come together for another tough game against City but we’ll be ready for it."
Tottenham Hotspur Women's boss Robert Vilahamn admitted that his side just could not keep up their bright start on the day.
"Extremely tough to lose in big numbers to Arsenal, of course," he said. "If you look at it, in the first 10 minutes, we looked quite good and then we had a spell for the rest of the first half which is not good, they were really strong in that moment and they scored a few goals.
"We tried to get back into the game in the second half, but they had some very clinical finishes. When Martha and Drew came on, we got back in the game, we played with more control and tried to create a few chances but, then again, they had a really strong attack at the end and scored a few more goals, so it’s a really tough loss."
The Swede added: "We need to make sure we reflect on this game, make sure we analyse it, and get better as well because, tactically, we can do better stuff and make better decisions.
"Those players that will stay and train, we’ll make sure to use them and make sure we can develop them during these two weeks, and when everybody comes back, we have a big game, so it’s more about preparing for that because it is against a top team. So, we need to make sure we learn from this and have a little bit of a better structure when we defend."
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