New Spurs coach Ho hums right notes to boost WSL side’s confidence | OneFootball

“We’re all in the same boat, in the same way, and no one’s drilling holes,” the new Tottenham head coach, Martin Ho, says. “The ambition and commitment to women’s sports and women’s football is there. Daniel Levy’s got very big plans for this club and this team moving forward.”

Ho, back in the Women’s Super League after two years in Norway with Brann, namechecks other senior Spurs personnel and sounds a further note of optimism. “When you’re all aligned strategically and you’re all going in the right direction I believe you can make things happen,” he says, having joined Tottenham last month.

In the 2023-24 season, Ho guided Brann through qualifying into their first Champions League group stage, where they finished second before being eliminated in the quarter-finals by the eventual champions, Barcelona. That influential first head coach’s role had followed time as an assistant with Everton and Manchester United.

“It was probably the right time to come back,” the 35-year-old Ho says. “There’s an expansion to the WSL and so on and I’ve probably come into it at the right time. More importantly, I think this club has huge quality and huge potential that we’re not fulfilling. It’s my job to make sure we do. There’s a lot of quality within the squad that maybe has not been able to be shown as much as people would have liked. The playing style, I feel, will help that.”

Ho says he inherited a team “low on confidence and maybe belief and motivation too”. A sixth-placed finish and run to the Women’s FA Cup final in the 2023-24 season was followed by a disappointing 11th-placed finish that resulted in the exit of the manager Robert Vilahamn. Vilahamn and Ho are very different characters, the softly spoken Swede contrasting with the animated, loud coach from Merseyside.

Ho says: “The first thing I said to the players was about motivation: ‘You have such a wonderful job as a person. There’s a lot of people that would love to be in that privileged position; the least we can give is an energy, commitment and hard work on the pitch and the quality and skill set will follow from the coaching staff.’

“Importantly, I’ve got to make sure that they feel valued, respected and trusted, and I want to take the reins off a little bit, to show we can be brave and that we’re good enough to play a certain way.”

Five weeks into the project things seem to be going in the right direction. You cannot take too much from a pre-season friendly, but a 4-3 win against the European champions Arsenal on Saturday points to an improved ruthlessness and has lifted spirits.

“I learned where we’re at as a group and individually and then the steps we need to take,” Ho says. “It’s really nice to see what we’re working on in training and the aspects we’ve discussed in education in the analysis room come to fruition. I’m really impressed with how they’ve applied themselves and how they’ve embraced something totally different to what they’re used to.”

What does his football look like? “I don’t want to sit back. I know you get pushed back, that’s different, I don’t want us to drop back. We’ll be front-footed, like we were against Arsenal in moments. I want to make sure that we’re consistently stepping forward and defending forward and, with the ball, being exciting, being brave and allowing individual players to show their individual qualities. I want us to be more expressive as a team so that we’re exciting in games and people want to watch us.”

Against Arsenal, Ho appeared to resort to a plan B when things weren’t quite working. How many plans does he have? “A to Z,” he says, with a laugh. “The game is going to throw you so many different problems. In England now it’s more of a chess game and you have to be very tactically flexible.

“In the first half we established good structure but we weren’t using the structure properly so we readjusted that slightly in the second half and that gave us more control and more opportunities to play forward and be brave. You have to appreciate Arsenal, they are a super, super team and they’re gonna have possession and are going to make us surrender at times, and we did, but the important thing for me was the ruthless edge we had going forward.”

A big job is improving Tottenham’s consistency. “I believe persistence gets you there and consistency keeps you there,” Ho says. “We’ve got to get persistent before we can get consistent.”

Up first for Tottenham is a London derby against West Ham a week on Sunday. West Ham finished last season strongly but Ho wants Tottenham to plant their flag. “The first game of the season is probably how you’re remembered and I want to make sure that we’re remembered in the right light.”

Header image: [Photograph: THWFC]