Kirsty Hanson: Tottenham's Ambitious Signing for WSL Success
Kirsty Hanson’s name was nowhere near the loudest this summer. No glossy unveiling from abroad, no viral clips doing the rounds. Yet Tottenham may just have pulled off the most ruthless bit of business in the Women's Super League window.
They’ve taken last season’s third-highest scorer and dropped her into an ambitious side that already believes it belongs in the Champions League conversation.
From overlooked to indispensable
Hanson arrives in north London off the back of the best campaign of her career. Twelve goals in 22 league games for an Aston Villa team that finished ninth is not padding stats in a dominant side; it is dragging a struggling one along.
Only Khadija Shaw and Alessia Russo scored more in the WSL last season. Hanson accounted for a staggering 43% of Villa’s league goals. Half of her shots hit the target – the best ratio among the division’s top five scorers – and she was far from a penalty-box passenger. Only two Villa players created more chances than her 16, and no one in that squad had more touches in the opposition box.
She scored, she created, she pressed, she tackled. She did the glamorous and the grimy.
That version of Hanson did not appear out of nowhere. Her career had been building towards it, even if the path was not smooth. At Manchester United, she helped lay the foundations of the club’s professional women’s team, then saw her minutes squeezed as competition intensified. Confidence ebbed away.
Villa’s loan move in 2022 arrived at exactly the right time. She needed a reset. She got far more than that.
Over two seasons she hit 26 goals in 100 appearances, collected two player-of-the-season awards and rebuilt the belief that had started to fray. “I've got to thank Villa so much. They know that I left on good terms. I really enjoyed my time,” she told BBC Sport. “Everyone there helped me boost my confidence again. Hopefully, I can just build on that now, but I'm not putting pressure on myself.”
Leaving that behind was never going to be easy. But ambition has a way of making hard choices feel necessary.
The Martin Ho factor
Hanson did not move blindly. She knows exactly what – and who – she is walking into at Tottenham.
“When they appointed Martin [Ho] as manager, I think that was a big statement because he is one of the best coaches I've worked with,” she said.
Ho and Hanson go back to their days at United, where he served as assistant coach from 2020 to 2023. He understands her game, her mentality, and crucially, how to stretch both.
He pushed hard to make her a priority signing this summer. Spurs backed him, paying an undisclosed fee to land the Scotland forward. That kind of alignment between coach and club is not accidental.
“I know he gets the best out of me with the detail he puts in. I really think that will push me further on in my career,” Hanson added.
The early signs? Brutal. “Training's been really tough. It was probably one of the toughest pre-seasons I've done so far. Martin is challenging us, trying to push us to our limits. That's what I really wanted, because I needed a challenge. I don't just want to be signed because they think I'm good, I want them to improve me.”
This is not a comfort move. It is a step into a harder environment by design.
Spurs’ quiet evolution
Tottenham finished fifth last season. Respectable, but not enough for a club that has started to talk, and now recruit, like it belongs higher up the table.
The target is clear: break into the WSL’s top three and reach the Women's Champions League. To do that, they have gone after proven end product and high ceilings.
Hanson is joined by West Ham’s top scorer Shekiera Martinez, French defender Alice Sombath from Lyon and creative midfielder Victoria Pelova from rivals Arsenal. Those names bring goals, steel and invention. They also bring a warning: nobody’s place is safe.
It is exactly the environment Hanson wants.
“I'm definitely comfortable [in the WSL] now but I still don't see myself as one of the best. I'm very critical of myself,” she said. “It's going to be tough. I'm not expecting anything. My main aim is just to be better because I've got so many levels to go to. Martin knows that as well.”
She arrives not as a superstar demanding guarantees, but as a leader willing to compete and to share. “I knew the level of players that were here. I'm just so excited to learn from them. I'm also here to help others, because that's what I've done at every club.”
Then came the line that sums her up better than any stat sheet.
“I might not be the most talented but I've got a lot of fight and hunger in me. I literally run through a brick wall for my team. Hopefully I've showed them that.”
A sharper, older head
Hanson’s growth has not been confined to the pitch. She talks now like a player who understands the full picture, not just her own role in it.
Armed with a degree in sports coaching, she already thinks like someone who reads games, not just plays in them. Asked where she has developed most, she said: “I know what to do at different points in the game. I know how to calm players down.
“Previously when I worked with Martin, I was younger and I wouldn't have been able to cope with that as much. But now I've definitely matured a lot.”
That maturity will matter in tight matches, the kind Spurs must start winning regularly if they are serious about breaking the top-three stranglehold.
Tottenham open their WSL campaign at home to West Ham on 6 September. By then, the noise around the headline foreign arrivals may have grown even louder.
But if Hanson’s Villa form carries over, and if Ho again unlocks the best version of her, it will not be long before one of this summer’s quietest transfers becomes one of its most decisive.
