View: Tottenham Women’s Martha Thomas picks up deserved Player of the Month award
Following in the footsteps of James Maddison and Son Heung-min, Tottenham Women’s striker Martha Thomas has earned the WSL Player of the Month award for October.
If you had told Spurs supporters that following an injury to Beth England a different Tottenham Women’s striker would pick up a Player of the Month award for October, they might well have told you that you were delusional.
After a season in which England was largely the only source of goals for a struggling Spurs side, many would have feared the worst without her. Nonetheless, those fears proved unnecessary, as a new hero has stepped up in her place.
Since her arrival from Manchester United on WSL deadline day, Thomas has filled in for the absent England and then some. The Scotland international has so far scored in every match she has played for her new club, and as a result has been recognised by the WSL, via their official X page (2 November), as the competition’s Player of the Month.
Six goals in four matches is an incredible return, and a breakdown of the underlying stats shows some even more impressive findings. Thomas is scoring at the rate of a goal every 60 minutes, with a shot accuracy of 65 per cent and a goal conversion rate of 35 per cent (BBC Sport).
In addition to her six goals in the league, she grabbed one off the bench in the cup during the 6-0 thrashing of Reading.
Her impressive form has contributed to Tottenham’s fantastic start to the campaign and life under Robert Vilahamn, which sees them sitting third in the WSL, just one point behind league leaders Manchester City Women.
Thomas has scored more than half of Spurs’ WSL goals so far this season, and it is therefore fair to say that they wouldn’t be where they are in the table without her.
Tougher tests will await Thomas and Vilahamn as the season continues, although it is so far so good for the striker and her manager, who might now be left wondering how he fits England back into the side without disrupting the form of Thomas.
That is certainly a sentence many Spurs supporters would not have expected to read at the beginning of the season, and is just another testament to how good Thomas has been – as if a Player of the Month award didn’t tell the story already.
In other Tottenham news, a player for the men’s team has also surprised everyone with his performances this season.