27th March 2026
By Rachel Cohen.
Martin Ho spoke to the media just minutes after his contract extension was announced. He talked about this and the support he has received from Spurs leadership; extensions for key players Olivia Holdt and Matilda Vinberg; what Clare Hunt’s absence would mean for the team; returning Asian Cup winners Maika Hamano and Tōko Koga; the upcoming North London Derby and more.
Ho’s contract extension
Martin Ho signed a new long term contract today after a successful first nine months at Spurs, with the club currently in fifth place, nine points above sixth placed Everton. The gap to the top four persists, but it has been a season in which existing players (most obviously Clare Hunt, Olivia Holdt and Matilda Vinberg) have improved and Ho has attracted some excellent new young talents to the club – many on the basis of his personal contacts and management style (e.g. Signe Gaupset). Ho was recently named Manager of the Month in February this year after the team’s 7-2 win away at Aston Villa.
Asked whether he had envisaged getting the extension Ho said that he hadn’t, but rather “you just put your head down, you do the work. And yeah, if that follows, then it’s nice if it doesn’t, you just keep working to make sure you put yourself in a position where you can do that when it’s when the time is to come to renew.” But he was happy that Andy Rogers and Vinai Venkatesham had proposed the renewal. “It shows a lot of belief and faith and I’m very grateful for that.
He described himself as “always in discussions with leadership, myself, Andy, Vinai and the wider leadership team to make sure that we’re in a position where we’re bringing in the right players, the right profiles for this club.”
Ho also praised the club’s ambition for the women’s team. “There’s a real ambition and desire from not just leadership but from the owners to invest in this team and they’ve been very, really good in believing in me to lead this project and team moving forward. And we’re in a really good position moving forward now into the summer transfer window and we’ll continue to do that.
“There’s a big energy and a big desire behind everyone at this club for the women’s team to be successful and we know what it’s going to take. We need time to do that but I have no doubts with this club and the ambition of the people around me that we’re going to go and achieve it just takes time for that to happen and if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have stayed here. But I have a lot of belief in what we can achieve here.”
He described Spurs women as “like a sleeping giant.” And committed himself to the project to wake that giant saying that “while I’m here, I’ll make sure I work tirelessly to make sure this team and club can be successful.”
Olivia Holdt and Matilda Vinberg contract extensions
In addition to Ho, players Olivia Holdt and Matilda Vinberg both got extensions to their contracts this week. Holdt has now been at the club just over a year and Vinberg just over two years. Holdt has increasingly made the number 10 position her own and has six goals and three assists this season, the highest number of goal contributions in the squad. Vinberg had a slower start to the season, but has increasingly been used as a starter – on either left or right wing – and now has two assists and a goal. Ho praised the two and their potential.
“Olivia and Matilda have a wonderful talent. Still got a lot more to come. They maybe haven’t showed everything yet and they maybe had some setbacks with little bits of injury and illness throughout the season. But Olivia’s now started to really show the type of player she is and the consistency within her game and the impact she can have within our game model.”
“Matilda’s starting to build up a little bit of form. She scored a couple of goals. She got an assist on the weekend and parts of her game are now starting to really show. But for different players, it takes a little bit of time, probably extra for some. But yeah, two wonderful players and two players I feel we’ve got a lot more potential in and I’m excited to work with both of them.”
Returning players
Maika Hamano and Tōko Koga have returned from their Asian Cup win. Ho said they’d trained with the squad and were ‘in good spirits’. And he highlighted the positivity they brought with them “when you come off the back of winning a final and winning a tournament, that brings back belief, confidence, motivation. We want to make sure that we can use that energy and use that enthusiasm on the weekend.”
Asked about what the team had missed with Koga’s absence Martin talked about how she settled the team down and adds intelligence to the play. “Someone’s presence like Tōko, I think [a] young player with calmness, definitely gives you, gives away a really relaxed order as a player and definitely settles the team down in terms of with and without the ball and it gives you an intelligence.”
In more good news for the defence, Ho said that Ella Morris, who is back in training after almost a year recovering from an ACL injury has ‘put herself in that contention to be selected in the squad.’
The loss of Clare Hunt
Less positively Hunt suffered a knee injury in Australia and is out indefinitely. Martin reflected on what she had brought over a season in which she has been one of Spurs’ most consistent players. He highlighted not only her stellar partnership with Koga but also her leadership within the team and the support she provides younger players.
“Clare plays a vital part in what we do and her personality and character just around the group or the way she leads by example. She leads around the young players, especially in the group who are new to the group or have been here and just need a little bit of guidance.”
“But her performances have been really good. And if you look at her and Tōko, they played a lot of the games based on their performances and they’ve done really well as a partnership and they’ve probably been arguably one of the best partnerships in the league this season.”
“Obviously now you will naturally miss Clare because she’s a big presence around the group. We’ll make sure we keep her around the group as much as we can to support the rest of the team moving forward. But yeah, it’s disappointing for any player that gets injured and I never want to see that. It’ll be disappointing for the team and the group around her. But we just need to make sure now we focus on the players we have here, which we do in those positions, which are good experienced players and we need to make sure that we put them in positions now where they get the opportunity to perform.”
Defensive lessons
Spurs have experienced their frist two losses on the trot under Martin Ho (to Everton at home and Manchester City away). Martin Ho was asked about why the team appeared to be so vulnerable to goals from crosses into the box. He pinpointed the need to be more aggressive and give the opposition less respect.
“It’s box defending and making sure we show a little bit more fight and desire and passion to win the first contact. And it’s also then making sure you can stop the crosses from those wider areas. But if we can’t stop them, we have to be better at defending the box.”
“In the first half we were nowhere near good enough set play or open play. We were too far off and we didn’t have enough hunger and desire to actually go and win those contacts. Second-half was much better. We showed that in stopping the crosses, getting in the box. We were defending the box better in that second-half. So we know we can do it and we have capability of doing it.”
“We’ve just got to make sure we don’t show any, yeah, we don’t show any fear. We respect the opponent, but we don’t show any fear when, yeah, crosses are going in or within those duels. We have to be more aggressive.”
Overall progress
In responding to questions from reporters Ho identified what he believed has changed under his tenure. “I think as a team, we’ve showed a lot of progress now moving forward. As you look at where we are now compared to where we was last season, we’ve took big steps. We’ve grown in mentality and character. We’ve adapted and changed a lot of things away from the pitch, on the pitch. I think huge credit to the players and staff for the work they’re doing. We’re in a really good space as a team.”
“We’re performing at a good level, I feel. Yeah, the odd performance in part of games hasn’t been great, and I’m the first to acknowledge that and take responsibility for that. But we need to make sure now we consistently perform, and that’s probably the part we need to get back to.”
Upcoming game vs. Arsenal
Ho was clear that the upcoming North London Derby would be tricky. “I’m under no illusions. We’re not going to be able to just turn up and think we’re grab it our way. It’s going to be difficult, as you just said, then they’re turn unbeaten in all competitions. They’re full of confidence, full of belief. They’ve got goals coming from every part of the pitch. So I have no doubt that they’re going to be right at it. It’s at their home ground.
“And we’re going to have to at times suffer without the ball and be prepared to do that. But when we have the ball, we’re going to have to express ourselves really well and make sure that we, when we go there, we apply ourselves and we don’t take the occasion. We just play the game.”
He was, however, confident that Spurs could get at Arsenal. “I feel there’s areas we can hurt them with individual players or with certain movements that we can look for in certain attacking areas of the pitch, but we have to make sure that we apply ourselves firstly, we get a foothold in the game, we play to the level we need to, the intensity we need to. And if we do that, we get into the right areas, I feel we can cause some problems.” He highlighted that even in the 5-2 loss against City the team produced numerous chances. “So when we’re really on it, I feel we can cause a lot of problems.”
He noted that the team would have to tighten up their defending of set pieces. “On the set play, I think, yeah, there may be areas we need to tighten up on too. We need to be better in those areas, we need to make sure we’re not conceding easy first contacts, we’re not conceding giving away easy fouls in those areas because they have really dangerous players who take those set plays. And if we do and we perform to a high level, then we make it competitive, in those individual duels in around the box we can perform against anyone.”
Spurs Women Blog 