Tottenham Women: A Season of Resilience and Hope
Tottenham’s women did more than win football matches last season. They rescued a fanbase.
While the men’s side spent much of the campaign staring into the relegation abyss – not just flirting with the drop but practically planning a life together – the women quietly put together the best Women’s Super League season in the club’s history. As the men clung on to Premier League status with white knuckles, the women were rewriting what it meant to watch Spurs with hope rather than dread.
A season that crackled
The numbers tell one story. The memories tell another.
There was the 7-2 demolition of Aston Villa, a game that felt like a glitch in the matrix: every attack humming, every combination clicking, goals flying in from all angles. There was the surreal FA Cup shootout against London City Lionesses, where the first 17 penalties found the net before someone finally blinked. There was Cathinka Tandberg’s 40-yard rocket, a goal that seemed to hang in the air long enough for the crowd to collectively gasp before it dipped into legend.
While all that was happening, the mood around the men’s team darkened. In WhatsApp groups full of long‑suffering season-ticket holders, the questions came thick and fast: why the endless passing around the box, where were the reinforcements for an injury-ravaged squad, how had it come to this? The “Spurs crisis hotline” ran hot.
The antidote was across town, in a different shirt with the same badge.
Three years ago, a family decision changed how one corner of the fanbase watched football. A trip to the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia, watching England edge Colombia 2-1 in Brisbane while vastly outnumbered by Colombian supporters, underlined what the women’s game could be: generous, vibrant, welcoming. That spirit carried back to north London and into Tottenham Women season tickets. It has not let go since.
Martin Ho’s clear blueprint
The turning point on the pitch came with a new face in the dugout. Martin Ho arrived last year with a solid coaching pedigree – assistant at Manchester United, head coach at Brann – and a reputation that travelled faster than his job title. Players, by all accounts, like him. More importantly, they play for him.
Ho has made a point of stepping out of the technical area bubble. At Leyton Orient, where Spurs Women play most of their home fixtures, he has been spotted wandering through the “Legends Lounge” before kick-off, chatting with supporters. It is a small thing, but it speaks to a connection that many clubs talk about and few truly build.
On the grass, his work is unmistakable. Spurs now play with an attacking edge and a clear structure. Roles are defined. Combinations look rehearsed without feeling rigid. Players understand how to cover each other, when to press, when to break. The chaos that once lurked in their own third has been replaced by something more composed, more confident.
Recruitment backed that shift. Olivia Holdt, operating from midfield, finished as the club’s top scorer last season, a constant threat between the lines. At the back, Toko Koga became a pillar in central defence, reading danger early and relishing the physical battle. January brought another dimension: Signe Gaupset, a midfielder who drives through the centre of the pitch with the ball, turning defence into attack in a few urgent strides.
Ho did not just lean on the new faces. He revived what was already there. The previous campaign had been grim, a year in which Tottenham finished just one place above relegation and parted company with Robert Vilahamn. Last season, they tore into the start, winning five of their first six league games. Whatever Ho said behind closed doors, it clearly was not an Igor Tudor-style demolition job about players who “can’t attack, can’t defend, can’t run.”
Spurs did all three. Relentlessly.
Eveliina Summanen snapped into tackles and knitted play together. Amanda Nildén offered balance and intelligence down the flank. Lize Kop brought authority in goal. Drew Spence added steel and experience. Clare Hunt read games with the calm of a centre-back who has seen it all before. Together, they formed a side that opponents could no longer dismiss as a soft touch.
Chasing the WSL elite
Reality still bites at the very top. Manchester City hit Spurs hard a couple of times, the gulf in depth and firepower laid bare by a team led by Khadija “Bunny” Shaw, whose goals-per-game record outstrips even Erling Haaland’s. City went on to win the league ahead of Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United – the established superpowers of the WSL.
Spurs finished fifth, just behind that quartet. In a league so heavily weighted towards the big four, that position matters. It signals something more than a one-off surge. It hints at a club edging closer to the conversation rather than watching it from a distance.
The response to that platform was immediate. Within days of the season ending, Tottenham moved in the market. Caitlin Dijkstra, a highly rated Netherlands international, arrived from Wolfsburg to reinforce the defence. Shekiera Martinez, who showed sharp finishing in a struggling West Ham side, came in to sharpen the attack. Kirsty Hanson joined from Aston Villa, bringing proven WSL experience, and Alice Sombath arrived from OL Lyonnes, another addition with pedigree.
The squad that kicks off the new season will look very different from the one that ran out three years ago. The ambition is unmistakable: this is a team preparing not just to survive among the elite, but to push them.
Goodbyes that sting
Progress comes with a cost. The departures of Bethany England and Ashleigh Neville cut deep.
Neville’s decision to move to Leicester to be closer to home makes sense on a human level, even if it hurts the dressing room and the terraces. She embodied the graft and commitment that underpinned Spurs’ rise. England’s exit is harder to square. As the club’s record goalscorer, she seemed an obvious candidate for at least a one-year extension. Instead, she leaves with her tally frozen, her contribution etched in history but no longer part of the future.
For supporters who have tracked this journey from the days when a handful of fans watched Broxbourne Ladies climb the lower leagues, these changes feel personal. The faces on the pitch shift; the bonds in the stands do not.
A different kind of matchday
What has not changed is the community around Tottenham Women. The regulars – many of them veterans of both men’s and women’s fixtures – bring encyclopedic knowledge and a stubborn loyalty. They write blogs, record podcasts, and subject themselves to away days at West Ham in horizontal rain. They remember the small crowds and the long roads. They understand exactly how far this team has come.
The matchday experience reflects that history. The atmosphere is passionate but rarely poisonous. Frustration at refereeing decisions still bubbles up – the occasional pointed question about whether the official has recently visited a certain high-street optician is inevitable – but the fury and profanity that often poison men’s games are largely absent.
Before kick-off, banners drape the stands, many featuring Spurs players alongside the Progress Pride flag. It is not tokenism. It is a clear, visible statement that LGBTQIA+ supporters and players belong here, that football can be a space for inclusion rather than exclusion. For some fans, that message only truly lands when they see it every other week in their own ground. Once it does, it is hard to unsee.
On the pitch, the product holds up. Women’s football may be a shade slower than the men’s game in pure physical terms, but the matches are brisk, open and – crucially – free of VAR. That brings the occasional glaring refereeing mistake, but it also preserves something many supporters feel they have lost: the ability to celebrate a goal without staring at a screen or waiting five minutes for a decision from a bunker.
You live with the odd howler. You get your game back.
What comes next
The hope now is simple: more people in the stands, more voices in the songs, more children growing up with Tottenham Women as their first team, not their second choice. The football justifies it. The environment rewards it.
Spurs Women are no longer a pleasant side story to a chaotic men’s club. They are one of the most upwardly mobile teams in the WSL, a group that has already broken its own ceiling and is now eyeing the glass above the top four.
The question is no longer whether they belong in that company. It is how soon they plan to kick the door down.
