View: Robert Vilahamn needs to stick around with Tottenham Women for more than two years to achieve goals
Tottenham Women manager Robert Vilahamn has praised the “knowledgable” Ange Postecoglou and admitted that he is attempting to replicate the Australian’s work.
Spurs’ men’s team have made a flying start to the season under Postecoglou. Having switched Celtic and Glasgow for Tottenham and North London in the summer, it has been a positive start to life in England for the 58-year-old, with the club unbeaten in their opening five Premier League games.
Meanwhile, Vilahamn has so far not had the opportunity to showcase what he can do with the WSL season having not yet got underway. After impressing with BK Hacken back in his home country Sweden, Vilahamn was appointed as Tottenham Women’s new boss during the summer, as announced by the club (7 July), penning a two-year deal.
Plenty of new players have arrived during the transfer window as the 40-year-old looks to help his new side bounce back from their thoroughly disappointing campaign last time out, during which they only narrowly avoided relegation from the WSL.
Postecoglou and Vilahamn’s appointments were announced within a month of each other, and the Swede feels as if he has benefited from this, as those higher up within the club look to improve integration throughout the ranks.
Speaking exclusively to talkSPORT (20 September), Vilahamn told the radio station, “I met him [Postecoglou] a few times and I think the recruitment team at Tottenham saw some similarities between me and him and how we are going to lead these teams.
“For me, he’s a great guy, he’s a knowledgeable guy and he has this experience. You see how the men’s team are playing right now and it’s amazing. It’s a good experience for me to see that he can do it and I’m going to do it with the women’s team as well.
“The way he approaches the players and his belief in how to play, I think that affects the players. I’m trying to do the same basically. The way he acts and leads those players is amazing.”
It won’t be an easy start for the manager, as he takes his players to Stamford Bridge for their first game of the season, on 1 October, where they will take on last season’s WSL champions and fierce London rivals, Chelsea.
Nonetheless, Vilahamn’s long-term ambitions suggest that he hopes games like this won’t seem so daunting further down the line.
“In the long run, we want to compete for titles and the Champions League as well. We’re going to make sure we turn this team around and make sure we play good football and then we’re going to start winning games. Hopefully, it doesn’t take too long.”
However, with ambitions such as those, Vilahamn will need to stick around at the club for longer than his current two-year deal if he has any hope of achieving them. Spurs’ women’s team is currently very far off of the level of the other top sides in the WSL, as they finished 40 points behind Chelsea last season, and it would be near-impossible to bridge that gap in two years.
He can, however, make a start toward reaching that goal by matching the start Postecoglou has made, as he wishes to do. By getting a positive run going, belief and optimism around the squad would be lifted, and the mood would be transformed very quickly, as has been seen with the men’s team.
This belief and optimism could carry them up the table, and see them push closer to a top-three finish, which would mean qualification to the Champions League.
In other Tottenham news, the club reportedly have a buy-back clause for one star who left this summer.