Tottenham women are making moves in the WSL.
Transfers in women’s football still don’t garner the attention they deserve, especially when they are not for record-breaking fees. Some transfers gain far less attention and headlines than they should, and at times it could also be moves for a player who has quietly been among the best in the entire league, season after season, without ever getting the recognition that same output would give at a more visible club.
And the latter is where Tottenham Women’s move for Kirsty Hanson from Aston Villa comes under.
By bringing her to Hotspur Way, Martin Ho may have gotten one of the players who can end up being among the most important ones, and that is for barely a fraction of the value that she would reap benefits for on the pitch.
Kirsty Hanson, the underrated goal-scoring menace in WSL
The 28-year-old Scotland international pens a long-term deal at Tottenham on the back of twelve goals that he netted in 22 WSL appearances last season. Her tally was third in the league charts, with only Manchester City ace Khadija Shaw and Arsenal striker Alessia Russo leading her.
Now that output is not of a player who is going to be merely a squad player but of someone who is one of the most productive forwards in the English women’s top tier, and that goal threat is exactly what can end up being the difference between a top three finish and a challenge for the title.
In the 2022/23 season when she was on loan at Aston Villa, she got herself 18 goal contributions (8 goals and 10 assists) across 28 games that season. And that is what helped Villa end the season with their best WSL finish in their history at the time. While for Hanson, it was enough for Villa to sign her on a permanent transfer. And she has only progressed since then. She eventually went on to score 12 times that season, and by doing that, she became the WSL’s best-ever scorer from Scotland in the space of a single season (beating Kim Little’s record of 11 goals that was set in 2012).
But amidst the menace she has been, you don’t hear her being mentioned in the same breath as the forwards plying their trade in Chelsea, Arsenal, and Manchester City. Adding to that, she has been a much more important part of their teams’ successes than most of them that we hear about.
One part of it has to do with the reality of the fact that it is inevitable that she gets less coverage given she is playing at Villa Park than for one of the established powerhouse clubs in the WSL. But another part of it has to do with her style of play. Hanson is not a footballer whose skills will earn her highlight reels; she creates her own output by intelligent movement, constant running, direct play, and the knack of getting herself into goal-scoring position without defenders knowing where she has come from.
Such players tend to get overlooked by the fans, but they bring a lot of value to managers, and Martin Ho certainly appears to be bringing exactly that to Tottenham.
The personal connection that accelerated this deal
While Hanson had been running riot in the WSL and it didn’t need any scouting push, her arrival at Tottenham does have a layer of personal history behind it. She has worked with Hanson before during the pair’s shared time at Manchester United, and that is exactly what Martin spoke about when the Lilywhites women unveiled her arrival.
He said (via. BBC)
“I know Kirsty well from working with her previously, and I know the qualities she brings both as a player and as a person. She has strong experience in the league, international experience with Scotland, and a clear hunger to keep pushing her game forward.”
The fact that Ho knows her and pushed to bring her means he already knows what she will bring to Tottenham.
A signing that also hurts a direct rival
While on one hand bringing in Hanon adds quality to the North Londoners’ roster, at the same time it also removes it from Aston Villa, who are a club operating in exactly the same competitive space that Ho’s Tottenham are trying to occupy.
The Villans lost their third-highest goal scorer in the entire WSL to a direct league rival.
To put it into context, she netted six goals against Tottenham across various competitions during her time at Villa Park. So bringing her from Villa to Tottenham is the kind of shift that changes the power balance in that middle tier of WSL in one transaction.
The bigger picture of Tottenham Women’s ambition
The Lilywhites have been going quite aggressively about their window in not only their men’s side but also their women’s one, and that shows in how Hanson joins the roster at Hotspur Way alongside Shekiera Martinez from West Ham, Caitlin Dijkstra, and now Victoria Pelova from Arsenal.
This gives Ho a set of players who can add proven WSL quality across multiple positions while also directly weakening two league rivals in the process.
The combination of Hanson’s goalscoring ability with Pelova’s creative intelligence in the second phase is something that feels like a genuine upgrade to the attacking quality at Ho’s disposal.
Does Kirsty Hanson help Ho win WSL?
Let’s be honest, Hanson alone does not win Tottenham the WSL title given that the gap between the Lilywhites and where Chelsea, Manchester City, and Arsenal are is genuine, and it cannot be closed down by just one player irrespective of how tenacious she is.
But her being on this roster means Tottenham now will be seen as genuine contenders for a top four finish. There have been questions about where goals will come from for Tottenham consistently across the season, and now we have an answer to that question.
Scoring twelve league goals while at Aston Villa is one thing. But then bringing that into a more talented and better structured system where she has some genuine creative support around her and a coach who already knows exactly how to deploy her most effectively can end up meaning more goals.
If Ho can successfully pair the goal threat that Kirsty Hanson brings to the table with the creativity of Pelova and the energy Martinez provides across the front line, then this attack at N17 suddenly has a weight that can hurt any team on their day.