A stunning Rianna Dean header and a birthday goal for Lucy Quinn either side of half-time gave the promoted Tottenham a surprise victory at the London Stadium.

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“Disappointed, frustrated, deflated. It’s really hard,” said the West Ham captain, Gilly Flaherty. “I said at the start, you don’t want to come here to a stadium like this and remember it as the time you got beat by Spurs and that’s happened.

“Just under 25,000, on a day where the weather was like our performance – rainy, sunny, rainy? For that amount of fans to come out and support us, it’s gutting we couldn’t get the result.”

If they were hoping the Hammers would put on a winning show in front of an impressive crowd of 24,790 – beating the 24,564 at Stamford Bridge on the opening weekend, but behind the record-setting 31,213 at the Etihad Stadium – Tottenham’s team sheet will have buoyed them.

The influential Gemma Davison, having picked up a knock in training, was ruled out of the fixture and, bizarrely, the pacy right-back Ashleigh Neville – arguably Tottenham’s player of the season – began the game on the bench.

However, the Tottenham managers, Karen Hills and Juan Amoros, were full of praise for balance and depth of their squad. “The girls were outstanding and thoroughly deserved it,” Hills said.

“The girls are learning from experiences. We’ve only been together a very short amount of time. The experienced players lead but the younger ones are really relishing the opportunities to play in the big games and they’re holding their own.”

West Ham’s decision to host the derby here was a logical progression from the forward-thinking women’s team but the manager, Matt Beard, said that perhaps the occasion affected them.

“Really disappointed with the result,” he said. “First half was a disappointing start for us. I don’t know whether nerves must have got the best of us because we didn’t perform well. [We were] too slow with the ball, too slow with the movement, then got punished with a poor goal where we turned the ball over twice.”

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West Ham began brightly but were wasteful. It was the slick combination of Rosella Ayane and Dean that would silence the home crowd. The former whipped a cross in from the left as Dean wriggled between the centre‑backs, Flaherty and Laura Vetterlein, to send a stunning, powerful header into the bottom-right corner.

After the break West Ham fought for the leveller. A mistake from an influential Filbey presented Alisha Lehmann with the ball on the edge of the area, she squared selflessly to Martha Thomas, who had a better angle, but her shot was saved by the excellent Becky Spencer.

“Becky Spencer, I wanted to throw her in the stands,” Flaherty said with a laugh. “She was annoying me with her time-wasting but that showed her experience.”

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With the clock ticking down they continued to have the edge, the substitutes Kenza Dali and Jacynta Galabadaarachchi exchanging passes before the latter shot inches wide of the left post. Thomas then sidefooted wide from six yards out with the goal gaping.

With West Ham looking nailed on to score next, Spurs caught them napping at the back. A deep free-kick from the left was poorly cleared and Quinn, recruited from Birmingham in the summer, sent the ball flying in.