In a radical departure from previous summers, Tottenham Hotspur acted early this year and got their transfer business done with relative calm.
The club’s former managing director of women’s football, Andy Rogers, said in February that work on Spurs’ summer window was well underway, and told supporters at an end-of-season event in June that the club’s business was almost complete. He wasn’t exaggerating.
The departures of Amy James-Turner, Luana Bühler, Charlotte Grant and Josefine Rybrink were announced with two games left in the 2025-26 season, while the signings of Shekiera Martinez (West Ham) and Caitlin Dijkstra (Wolfsburg) quickly followed back in May. This summer window has also seen centre back Molly Bartrip head to Crystal Palace after five years at Spurs and midfielder Anna Csiki join Benfica.
Spurs signed four more players over the course of June and July. Kirsty Hanson (Aston Villa), Victoria Pelova (Arsenal), Selma Panengstuen (Brann) and Alice Sombath (Lyon) were all brought in by the time pre-season had begun, helping manager Martin Ho start work on achieving a top-four place this upcoming season.
In a statement, the club said they were “delighted to have done this business so early in the window” and that they had added “high performing, internationally experienced players who fit the profile of the team that Martin Ho is committed to building and developing”.
Defensive depth
Those new signings strengthen Spurs in their key areas of need. The team’s backline was somewhat threadbare by season’s end after Clare Hunt (centre-back) and Hanna Wijk (right-back) both sustained knee injuries in the spring, while several of Spurs’ departing players have been defenders or keepers. It is therefore no surprise that two incoming players are defenders and one is a goalkeeper.
The most immediately exciting of Spurs’ latest intake is French international Alice Sombath, who signed from Lyon for a club-record fee of around £400,000. At 22, Sombath already has significant international and Champions League experience and is most likely to start in central defence alongside last season’s breakout young defender, Tōko Koga.
