2025/26 Women's Super League Season Preview

Another Spurs Women season is upon us, after a fairly quiet off-season. Let's hope it's more a situation of wanting to go under the radar than troubling complacency (I'm a little troubled, to be honest).

In this issue: State of the team | Predicting the starting XI | Season prognosis | Narratives across the league | Quickfire predictions

If you read my Premier League preview from last month, this format will look familiar. It's mostly Spurs-centric, but I will touch on the rest of the league briefly. Without further ado, let's dive into the 2025/26 Women's Super League season!

State of the team

I will preface this section by saying that I'm genuinely excited about our two new signings.

But otherwise it's status quo for the squad—which doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. The departing players had either already been phased out (Becky Spencer, Rosella Ayane) or failed to make much of an impact as new signings (Hayley Raso, Anna Csiki [going on loan this season]). We aren't losing a surplus of clean sheets or goals due to their absence in the squad.

The somewhat strange thing is that the incoming players (Tōko Koga and Cathinka Tandberg) aren't direct replacements for any of those outgoing players. Instead, we'll be relying on players who previously missed significant gametime due to injury (Kit Graham, Olivia Holdt) or falling out of selection favor under Robert Vilaham's management (Matilda Vinberg) to make up for those players' production—or rather, improve upon it, because they truly weren't bringing much to the table for various reasons.

The only player who truly wasn't replaced was Spencer, but the club has decided to gamble on both Lize Kop and Eleanor Heeps avoiding major injury, at least until January. Academy player Sophie Jackson has been training with the senior team throughout pre-season, but is in a similar situation to Heeps last season in that she is uncapped at the senior level and would be under a lot of pressure to suddenly perform if called upon.

We're also a bit lighter in the winger ranks now, but have several forwards who have positional versatility across the forward line, so that gap is mostly accounted for. With that extra spot, Araya Dennis has now been fully promoted to the senior team and will actually be featuring at left fullback rather than at winger, where Vilahamn employed her in a couple of cup match appearances last season before she went on loan.

So where does that leave the squad as a whole?

In addition to the light goalkeeper ranks, we're functionally lacking depth in the defensive line as well due to injuries/long-term absences. Ella Morris will miss most, if not all, of the season with an ACL injury picked up early in the off-season at England training, while Luana Bühler also enters the season with a medium-term injury. Molly Bartrip took a knock in pre-season that isn't expected to keep her out for long, but is still a worry since she's one of the most senior and experienced players. Ash Neville missed out on the friendly games but wasn't included in the latest injury update. Amy James-Turner opened up about her mental health struggles earlier this year; her timeline to return to the squad is uncertain. Unfortunately, I don't feel terribly confident about Clare Hunt and Josefine Rybrink filling in at the centerback position in the meantime, though a trend for the whole team is that last season saw a major underperformance across the board, and we can be hopeful that new manager Martin Ho will bring them back to consistency, if not improvement. Still, it's not ideal to be integrating a new, young centerback like Koga with less-than-reliable partners, no matter how promising Koga is herself.

The midfield is actually a source of excitement for fans this season, at least in its current uninjured state. Graham doesn't look to have lost a step after her second ACL rehab and will surely be a valuable source of creativity from the #10 role, but will see strong competition from Holdt for the starting spot. It's never a bad thing to have two very strong rotation options for a position. Maite Oroz is also looking rejuvenated after some minor injury struggles last season and a slow adaptation to the WSL. And as always, Eveliina Summanen and Drew Spence can be relied on for their physicality and savvy ball progression—not to mention the former's increasing skill for scoring a free kick goal. Olga Ahtinen is a bit of a wild card since she had fallen so far down the pecking order under Vilahamn, but hopefully she can regain form under a new manager.

I'm also feeling fairly bullish about our forward options now that we've signed another striker. Although Martha Thomas looked better in pre-season than she did at any point during the previous campaign, she's never proven herself as a go-to backup for Beth England, and we couldn't go another season placing such a heavy burden on England. Tandberg will need time to adjust to her new league, however, so fingers crossed that England stays fit for the foreseeable future. Our primary winger options, Jess Naz and Vinberg, were two of the brightest spots in pre-season and seem invigorated by Ho's tactics. Lenna Gunning-Williams had a disappointing first senior season under Vilahamn, but it's definitely too early to write her off yet. There are also several players who can fill in on the wing in a pitch, including Holdt, Amanda Nildén, and Charli Grant (one could argue that the latter two are almost more suited to winger than fullback because of their defensive weaknesses, but I digress).

So even though we're largely working with the same core of players as last season, the glimpses we've seen of how said players have responded to Ho's tactical approach does provide some hope for a better outcome on the pitch.

Predicting the starting XI

Taking all of those factors into account (with one gamble on availability), I've taken a stab at predicting our first Women's Super League lineup of the season.

Here are my picks to secure a win and all three points on matchday 1 against West Ham United:

(Injury note: Molly Bartrip is in contention to make the matchday squad but will have a late fitness test. Ella Morris and Luana Bühler are both ruled out.)

My big swing was including Ash Neville, who missed all three pre-season games. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but she wasn't on the injury report and is still our most experienced fullback option, so I would love to see her on the pitch for the season opener. Alternatives would be either Charli Grant or Tōko Koga shifting to the right and bringing Josefine Rybrink in to partner with Clare Hunt in the centerback pairing.

Otherwise, I think these players are fairly safe bets based on pre-season performance. Kit Graham would be the first player off the bench for me and will surely start some games as the season progresses, but I get the sense that Ho is being careful about easing her back in after her long-term injury absence.

I'm hopeful that our new striker, Cathinka Tandberg, will be able to make the matchday squad, but she won't have had much (if any) training with the team and is therefore only a bench option. And anyway, I couldn't see Ho benching the captain, Beth England, for the first game.

Season prognosis

I know I've expressed optimism about seeing better performances from the squad, but that needs to be put into proper context. We are still far behind the top teams in the league in both investment and ambition. Perhaps now that Daniel Levy has stepped down as club chairman, we will see a more serious show of intent for the Women's team, but that doesn't change the fact that we've already fallen behind. Thankfully, we finally have a manager who is being honest about that reality and not sugarcoating the situation he has inherited.

If you’re saying to me now, "Are we going to be in the Champions League next season?" I wouldn’t be being realistic, if I’m being honest.

That being said, I understand Martin Ho's strategy to mostly hold pat with the existing squad and assess if there are changes needed in the January window. There are quite a few players that Robert Vilahamn was not getting the best out of, and who didn't deserve to be transferred after one bad season. But the pressure will be on to get the squad closer to the standard that fans expect, to say nothing of the club's supposed ambitions. We just have to be realistic about the fact that the amount of investment—as well as the quality of recruitment—into the squad has been lacking compared to the clubs we want to be competing with for European qualification.

Still, this team was already better on paper than its actual 11th-place finish last season, and I would be very surprised (and disappointed!) if we end up in the same place for this campaign. We definitely have enough talent that we should avoid the relegation playoff game (in case you missed it, the WSL has changed its competitive format this season to enable expansion for next season, taking away automatic relegation and implementing a playoff game between the 12th-place WSL team and the 3rd-place WSL2 team).

A table finish somewhere between 8th and 6th feels like a manageable target for Ho's first season.

My personal wish for this season is that we take the cups seriously and at least reach another semi-final. A cup run would galvanize both players and fans. Our League Cup group is very favorable this year, so there's no excuse not to reach the knockouts of that competition.

Narratives across the league

To wrap things up, let's take a look at some of the other teams in the league as I note a few storylines that I'll be keeping an eye on.

Can anyone stop Chelsea from repeating as Women's Super League champions (again, and again, and again...)?

Look, I'm not the only one asking this question. It seems to be the main topic in every WSL preview I've read or listened to so far.

I still think Sonia Bompastor is a downgrade from Emma Hayes as Chelsea's manager, and has often flattered to deceive tactically thanks to the individual skill of her players (both at Lyon and now at Chelsea), but you can't get around the fact that the playing squad she has to work with is ridiculously stacked. It is the definition of squad depth. And that embarrassment of riches only became richer with the addition of American winger Alyssa Thompson.

I just don't see anyone pipping Chelsea to the top spot this season. Now, whether they can finally get over their final Champions League hurdle is another matter.

Just how big of a threat are London City Lionesses?

They're not reasonable relegation candidates, for one thing. That's no small feat for a newly promoted team in the WSL, which tends to see the promoted club go straight back down. Liverpool were the last team to survive the immediate drop, and they didn't have anywhere near the resources the LCL have under Michele Kang's ownership.

The multi-club ownership model of it all is the elephant in the room with much bigger implications than LCL's eventual WSL safety at the end of the season, but the short-term upshot is that the newcomers had a very strong (and spendy) transfer window, bringing their squad up to presumptive mid-table quality already. I suspect this flurry of transfer activity may prompt the powers-that-be at WSL Football and the FA to get serious about updating the league's profit and sustainability rules to reflect the growth of the women's game. But until then, LCL have a massive monetary advantage when it comes to meeting their ambitions.

Sure, they fell to Arsenal by a heavy margin in their opening game, but their fellow London team is a potential title-contender, so the result wasn't all that surprising. But even then, it was a close game until the final ten minutes when Arsenal scored two goals in two minutes to seal the win. LCL were able to stay in the game as long as they did thanks to a lineup full of experienced players, both at WSL level and from other top flights across the globe. Against fellow mid-table teams, they will cause problems.

On the flipside, making so many transfers in one window gives manager Jocelyn Precheur a tall task in creating a cohesive team identity on the pitch. Unfortunately for Spurs, we play them close to the end of the first half of the season, by which point they'll have had plenty of time to start figuring things out. So, as far as our table standing compared to LCL goes, they're a definite threat.

Which team will be the surprise package—good and bad?

At the risk of being in a "fool me once..." situation, I'm going to go with Everton for the positive surprise. God only knows how he has had the patience to stick it out through some very lean seasons, but Brian Sørensen is a very capable manager, and he's finally starting to get some investment into his playing squad to match. The Ruby Mace transfer has gotten the most attention, but they've also signed a highly regarded centerback, Rion Ishikawa, and a Barcelona academy product, Martina Fernandez.

As for the negative surprise... This is partially just me trying to manifest it, but maybe Manchester United have finally let one too many stars go (Grace Clinton being the latest, in a very predictable case of karma for Celin Bizet betraying Spurs)? And at some point, the inane decision to stick with Marc Skinner has to bear rotten fruit. Right? Right?! Let me cope.

Quickfire predictions

Why not! Particularly the last one...

• Tottenham's WSL table finish: 7th
• WSL winner: Chelsea
• Golden Boot winner: Kerolin
• FA Cup winner: Manchester City
• League Cup winner: Tottenham

There's only one thing left to say:

COYS

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