Kirsty Hanson: From Aston Villa to Tottenham's Ambitious Project
Kirsty Hanson does not arrive in north London with the fanfare of a superstar import. She turns up with something far more awkward for defenders to deal with: numbers, edge, and a point to prove.
While the Women's Super League spent the summer looking outward, Tottenham quietly raided a rival and landed last season’s third-highest scorer. Hanson has traded Aston Villa for Spurs, and if this move slipped under the radar, that says more about the noise around others than the impact she has just left on the league.
Twelve goals in 22 WSL games for a side that finished ninth. Only Khadija Shaw and Alessia Russo scored more. Hanson didn’t ride the wave of a dominant team; she was the wave for Villa.
From rebuilding at Villa to a new challenge
Hanson’s surge last season did not come from nowhere. Her four-year spell at Aston Villa charted a steady climb, not a sudden spike. Before that, she had helped Manchester United build their professional women’s side, then hit the familiar wall of inconsistent minutes.
By the time Villa took her on loan in 2022, she needed more than a change of shirt. She needed belief. She found it.
Across 100 appearances, she scored 26 goals and collected two player-of-the-season awards. The numbers tell one story; her own words fill in the rest. She speaks openly about how low her confidence had dropped and how much Villa did to restore it. She left on good terms, grateful, but aware that her career now demanded a different kind of step.
That step is Tottenham. Not a sideways move from mid-table to mid-table, but a jump into a project that has started to grow teeth.
The Martin Ho factor
If there is a single thread tying this transfer together, it is Martin Ho. Spurs’ decision to appoint him as manager was a clear signal of intent. For Hanson, it was personal as well as professional.
Ho worked with her as assistant coach at Manchester United between 2020 and 2023. He knows her game, her habits, her ceiling. He pushed for her this summer, and the club backed him, paying an undisclosed fee to get her in.
Hanson talks about him with the kind of conviction that matters in elite dressing rooms. She trusts his detail, the way he drills into the finer points of her game, the way he squeezes more out of players who already think they’re close to their limit. She believes he gets the best out of her. Now he has the chance to prove it over a full season with her as a central piece, not a supporting act.
Pre-season under Ho has been brutal by her own admission. One of the toughest she has experienced. That is exactly what she wanted. Not a club impressed by what she already is, but one determined to stretch what she can still become.
A ruthless edge in the final third
Strip the emotion away and the numbers are stark.
Last season, Hanson scored 43% of Aston Villa’s league goals. Nearly half of everything they managed. Among the league’s top five scorers, she posted the best shots-on-target ratio at 50%. When she pulled the trigger, it mattered.
She did not simply finish moves; she helped start them. Only two Villa players created more chances than her 16, and she had more touches in the opposition box than anyone else in that team. She lived where defenders hate forwards to live: constantly on their shoulders, constantly asking questions.
Then there is the work without the ball. Hanson ranked among the leading performers in her position for defensive actions, including tackles and interceptions. She presses, she tracks, she bites into duels. She is not the luxury forward who waits for service. She is the forward who helps win it back.
That blend – goals, creativity, graft – is exactly what Tottenham have lacked when trying to turn promise into something more concrete.
Spurs’ ambition, sharpened
Tottenham finished fifth last season. Respectable, but not enough for a club now openly talking about the top three and Women’s Champions League football.
Their recruitment this summer has matched that ambition. Alongside Hanson, Spurs have brought in West Ham’s top scorer Shekiera Martinez, highly-rated France defender Alice Sombath from Lyon, and creative midfielder Victoria Pelova from Arsenal. That is not tinkering. That is a squad being recalibrated for a higher level.
For Hanson, it means something she welcomes: a fight for her place. She does not see herself as one of the league’s elite, despite the goals. She is fiercely self-critical, convinced there are several more levels in her game. Ho seems to agree.
She arrives not as the star who expects to start, but as the forward who intends to earn it every week. She talks about learning from the quality already in the dressing room, but also about helping others, as she has done at every club. She insists she might not be the most naturally gifted, yet promises fight, hunger, and a willingness to “run through a brick wall” for her team.
Given the way she played for Villa last season, that does not sound like a throwaway line.
A more complete player – and person
Hanson’s evolution has not just happened between the white lines. She has matured off the pitch, too, and now holds a degree in sports coaching that she hopes to use in the future.
On the field, that education shows in different ways. She talks about understanding game states better, knowing when to slow things down, when to calm team-mates, when to inject tempo. When she previously worked with Ho at United, she was younger, less equipped to carry that kind of responsibility. Now she feels ready.
Tottenham are banking on that maturity as much as her finishing. This is a squad packed with talent, but still learning how to win consistently at the very top end. A forward who leads by example in effort, who understands the rhythm of games, and who has just carried a mid-table attack on her back is a valuable addition to that mix.
On 6 September, Spurs open their WSL campaign at home to West Ham. All eyes may drift to the marquee foreign arrivals scattered around the division. Yet it may be the Scotland international in white, the one who quietly outscored almost everyone last season, who ends up defining how far Tottenham can really go.
