Women’s Super League 2025-26 previews No 11: Tottenham | OneFootball

Guardian writers’ predicted position: 10th (NB: this is not necessarily Suzanne Wrack’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)

Last season’s position: 11th

Prospects

Something needed to change after a disastrous 2024-25 season but pinpointing what exactly went wrong is difficult. Under Robert Vilahamn Tottenham had reached a first FA Cup final and finished sixth in the WSL at the end of the 2023-24 campaign. The club felt like it was in a really strong place with confidence in the project sky high.

Fast forward to May and Spurs were one off the bottom, their cup heroics a distant memory and there was lots of head scratching. It was inevitable that Vilahamn would depart and it was probably the correct decision given the lack of cohesion on the pitch and backward slide. Martin Ho’s arrival offers a fresh start to a team whose ambitions took a hefty blow last term.

On paper, the quality in the squad is good and if Beth England stays fit then there is cause for optimism. As the midfielder Olivia Holdt, who arrived in January with Tottenham in freefall, told the Guardian: “I could see that people were low and we were struggling a lot. It was weird because when I looked around in the locker room I felt these were, and are, good players. Player for player I thought we had a great team.

“That’s the thing that was so hard last year. That’s also why I feel so confident going into this season because we still have the same squad, relationships have been built, we’ve been through that downhill season together and now we want to prove ourselves.”

Ho has been their biggest acquisition, with only the impressive Japanese defender Toko Koga coming in on the player side, while Rosella Ayane, Becky Spencer and Hayley Raso have departed. Assessing the impact of a change in manager will come in the coming weeks but a 4-3 defeat of the European champions Arsenal in pre-season, albeit in a friendly and with several star Gunners missing, will have given them a bucket-load of confidence.

The manager

Ho has come in with a high coaching pedigree, having been an assistant coach at Everton and Manchester United before stepping into a first head coach position with the Norwegian side Brann, who he led to the Champions League quarter-finals. Ho is a very different profile of manager to Vilahamn. Holdt says: “It’s very different and I don’t say that in any bad way, it’s just two completely different styles. Martin’s approach is a bit more loud and animated but we needed that and we needed someone to come in and shake us up.”

Off-field picture

There is a desire at Tottenham for the women’s team to improve and be successful. Ho recently described the chai, Daniel Levy, as having “very big plans” for the women’s team moving forward and said it was critical to his recruitment. The arrival of the former Arsenal CEO Vinai Venkatesham will have been a big boost and will probably be evident moving forward, with Venkatesham having been a key driver in the growth of Arsenal’s women team. The team has been integrated into the club’s Hotspur Way training ground, and with some of their home games played at the main stadium there is a feeling that Tottenham have the ingredients for success off the pitch. But they need the investment in signings.

Star signing

Is your one signing your star signing? Yes and Koga, who joined from Feyenoord, is genuinely a defender to watch. The Japan international was announced as having signed a deal that will keep her in north London until 2029 on 2 July. She is only 19 but after impressing for Japan’s youth teams made her senior debut against the United States of America in the SheBelieves Cup in April 2024, played every game at that year’s Olympics and scored the winning goal against the USA in this year’s SheBelieves Cup as Japan won the friendly competition. Ho says she has “calmness, really good appreciation with the ball in terms of when to play and when not to play and also intelligence off the ball”.

Stepping up

Many Tottenham players will be hoping to step up after a disappointing campaign but Holdt is raring to go and is fuelled by the fire of missing out on Denmark’s Euros squad. Holdt was a prolific goal scorer from midfield in her native Denmark and in Sweden, where she scored 25 goals in 39 games for Rosengård before Tottenham decided to sign her. Helping deliver from midfield is something she is keen to add in the WSL. “It’s very important, but at the same time, I will always put the team first,” she said. “In the previous clubs I’ve contributed with goals and assists. So, of course, it’s something I like to see myself doing. But most importantly I want us to win games.”

It was a good summer for …

The defender Amanda Nildén was part of the Sweden squad for the 2025 Euros in Switzerland this summer that impressed before going out to England in the quarter-finals despite being 2-0 up.

Main initiative to attract more fans

Tottenham are yet to announce which fixtures will be hosted at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this season but they have made efforts to make Leyton Orient’s Brisbane Road a suitable second home. Previous seasons have seen the club use DJs and breakdancers to get the crowds going and those types of initiatives will probably continue. The matchday experience at the club’s main stadium is still their biggest way of pulling in a crowd though, converting fans that come to those games into regulars is key for the growth of their fanbase.

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