Tottenham Women: A Transformative Season and Growing Fanbase
Tottenham’s women did more than play good football last season. They rescued a fanbase.
While the men’s side toyed with catastrophe – not just flirting with relegation but practically picking out curtains for their new life together – the women’s team offered something startlingly different: clarity, ambition and joy. As the men staggered over the line to secure Premier League safety, Spurs Women quietly put together the best Women’s Super League points haul in the club’s history.
There were nights when they were irresistible. A 7-2 demolition of Aston Villa, all chaos and swagger. An FA Cup epic against London City Lionesses decided by a penalty shootout so surreal it felt scripted – 17 spot-kicks in a row buried before someone finally blinked. Cathinka Tandberg lashing in a 40-yard screamer that seemed to hang in the air long enough for everyone to realise they were watching one of those goals that will be replayed for years.
While the men’s WhatsApp groups burned with questions – Why the endless passing around the box? Where are the reinforcements for all these injuries? – there was another Spurs story unfolding a few miles away, one built on something much more stable than angst: a team with a plan.
A new voice, a new shape
The turning point came with Martin Ho’s appointment as head coach last year. His CV was solid rather than showy – assistant at Manchester United, head coach at Brann in Norway – but his impact at Spurs has been sharp and immediate.
Players, by all accounts, like him. More importantly, they look like they understand him. His side attack with purpose and defend with structure. Roles are clear. Movements look rehearsed rather than improvised. Spurs Women now resemble a team that knows exactly what it wants to be.
Ho has also understood something many managers overlook: connection. At Leyton Orient, where Spurs Women play most of their home games, he’ll occasionally wander into the “Legends Lounge” before kick-off, chatting to supporters, putting names to faces. It’s a small detail, but it fits the bigger picture – a club trying to build something with its fans, not just in front of them.
On the pitch, the recruitment has matched the ambition. Olivia Holdt finished as the club’s top scorer from midfield, a constant threat between the lines. Toko Koga anchored central defence with a calm, uncompromising presence. January brought Signe Gaupset, who doesn’t so much carry the ball through midfield as tear through it, dragging the team up the pitch.
Ho hasn’t just added new faces; he’s revived old ones. The previous campaign had unravelled badly, Spurs limping home one place above relegation and costing Robert Vilahamn his job. Last season, the response was emphatic: five wins in the first six games and a side transformed in intensity and belief. Whatever Ho said behind closed doors, it clearly wasn’t an Igor Tudor-style demolition job questioning whether his players could attack, defend or run. Tottenham did all three – and did them well.
Eveliina Summanen’s authority, Amanda Nildén’s energy, Lize Kop’s presence in goal, Drew Spence’s experience, Clare Hunt’s reliability: this was a spine you could trust.
Chasing the giants
Reality still bites in the WSL. There were heavy defeats to Manchester City, but then City have Khadija “Bunny” Shaw, whose goals-per-game ratio even outstrips Erling Haaland’s. City went on to win the title, finishing ahead of Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United – the four clubs who continue to set the pace and budgets in the division.
Spurs came fifth, right behind that elite pack. Not an afterthought, not clinging on, but close enough to start asking a serious question: when does this team break into the top four? On this trajectory, it no longer feels fanciful to say it could happen in the next year or two.
The club’s early work in the transfer market suggests they think so too. Within days of the season ending, Spurs moved for Caitlin Dijkstra, the highly rated Netherlands international defender from Wolfsburg, to stiffen the back line. Shekiera Martinez arrived from West Ham, a clinical finisher who stood out even in a struggling side. Then came further quality: Kirsty Hanson from Aston Villa, Alice Sombath from OL Lyonnais. Not just bodies. Players with pedigree.
There has been pain as well. Saying goodbye to Bethany England, the club’s record goalscorer, feels like the end of an era. Her departure without even a one-year extension on the table is hard to square with her status and contribution. Ashleigh Neville’s exit to Leicester, driven by a desire to be closer to home, makes emotional sense but still leaves a hole in the squad and in the stands. These are the players who helped drag Spurs to this point.
The squad that kicks off this season will look very different from the one that first drew many fans in three years ago. The bond in the stands, though, hasn’t shifted an inch.
A different kind of matchday
Around Tottenham Women, there’s a core of season-ticket holders whose relationship with the club runs deep. Many have followed both the men’s and women’s teams for years, writing blogs, recording podcasts, trudging to West Ham away to be soaked by sideways rain and poor decisions. They remember the days when a handful of loyal supporters watched Broxbourne Ladies – as the club then was – grind their way up the leagues. For them, WSL football is not a novelty. It’s the reward.
The atmosphere reflects that history. Frustration is there, of course – this is football – and referees are still politely reminded of the services available at certain well-known high street opticians. But the fury, the relentless swearing and simmering anger that can seep through men’s games is largely absent. Families come, stay, and come again.
Before kick-off, fans drape banners of Spurs players across the stands, many woven with the Progress Pride flag. It’s more than decoration. It’s a statement: everyone is welcome here. For some supporters, that visibility has been an education in itself, a reminder that football can do more than entertain. It can shift culture.
On the pitch, the game is fractionally slower than the men’s, but the rhythm is different rather than diminished. Matches flow. No VAR. No five-minute waits while everyone in the ground stares at a big screen that tells them nothing. There are still refereeing howlers, of course, but they sting less than the dead air that swallows momentum in the men’s game.
For one family, the journey into this world began in Australia in 2023. England’s Lionesses reached the World Cup final, and in a Brisbane fan zone after the 2-1 quarter-final win over Colombia, something stuck. Surrounded by about 2,000 Colombia fans and barely 20 England supporters, they watched rival fans detour just to shake their hands. That sense of shared experience, of football as a bridge rather than a wedge, felt like something worth chasing for their son. When they got home, they bought Spurs Women season tickets.
They found what they were looking for.
The next step
Now comes the real test. Spurs Women have escaped the shadows of the men’s struggles and carved out their own identity: attacking, organised, ambitious. They sit just outside the WSL’s established elite with a smart coach, an improving squad and a fanbase that has grown not through hype, but through word of mouth and weekends well spent.
This season, the hope is simple: more people in the stands, more children seeing this version of football up close, more eyes on a team that has earned attention rather than demanded it.
Fifth place has whetted the appetite. The recruitment hints at intent. The question, as the new campaign approaches, is no longer whether Spurs Women belong at this level.
It’s how far, and how fast, they can climb from here.
