Stepping Up With Spurs (Ashleigh Neville and Rachel Furness interviews)

Two interviews under one title, chosen to represent the two halves of a promoted squad. Ashleigh Neville came up through the Championship with Tottenham and gave up a teaching job in Birmingham over the summer to turn professional: she talks about starting pre-season two weeks late, adapting to three gym sessions a week, losing her guaranteed starting place, and still emailing the boy she used to support at school. Rachel Furness signed on loan from Reading two days before the season opened at Stamford Bridge, having concluded she would not get the football she believed she deserved. At 31 she is blunt about wanting to play, about putting everything into every tackle, and about Northern Ireland’s rise under Kenny and Dean Shiels – insisting Euro 2021 remains mathematically possible.