Inside the Lower Leagues: From WSL General Manager to owning a club

Nicole Allison used to be General Manager at Tottenham Hotspur, now she's returned home to Worcester to set up her own club almost from scratch, with lofty aspirations...

Apr 02, 2025

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Nicole Allison returned home to Worcester to take over her hometown team

How do you go from being the General Manager of a Women’s Super League bound team to the owner of your very own football club?

That is the question I put to Nicole Allison, formerly General Manager of Tottenham Hotspur during their promotion campaign back in 2018/19, and now the owner and chairwoman of Worcester City Women, a club just three years old but already competing in the FA Women’s National League pyramid.

Allison, who has worked in sport most of her life and an advocate for women in sport in general, is a Worcester native, and made it her aim to bring professional women’s football to the city after she left Tottenham in 2019.

The answer she gives when I ask what is admittedly a very open-ended question is as in-depth as it is insightful and interesting, to hear the story of how it all came about, and the deep-rooted passion behind the motives.

“It wasn’t particularly by huge design,” Allison laughs. “I said to people, I was never at Tottenham thinking I wanted to own my own club or back when I grew up here in Worcester. I didn’t know women could even play football and I certainly didn’t know a woman could own a club or even work in one.

“As I’ve grown up, did my masters in London, worked in men’s football for eight years before Spurs. Spurs was the eye opener to the potential women’s football had, but also the work which needed to be done. The structure, the resources, the understanding of why the women’s game is different and needs to be treated differently. I loved my time at Spurs, always been a massive Spurs fan, but it was tough knowing there was a limit to how much I could do, and I felt personally after being promoted to the WSL I needed to step away, take that knowledge and impact more people and more organisations.”

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In 2019, Allison set her up own consultancy firm which she admits was her “main aim”, having worked in similar market research roles with both the EFL and YouGov before joining Tottenham in September 2017.

“I did a lot of fan experience and engagement work, that was always a huge part of my upbringing and working at the EFL, so that, but with a focus on women’s football. I worked in education, me writing a lot of the women’s football modules and teaching that, and I teach that at Worcester University where those were the key strands.

“I also fell into being an agent and that wasn’t by design at all, but a lot of Tottenham players didn’t have agents then and came to me for advice on their contracts, whether it was to stay or to move on or just didn’t understand the details, and I just wanted to help them. I registered to become an intermediary, joined an agency which I felt aligned with my values, supporting the under-represented areas of women’s football, and I developed some good relationships. I represented Jayne Ludlow when she was Wales head coach, then COVID-19 hit, and it was a bit of a watershed moment.

“I noticed after the first few months the disparity. Men’s football continued and the women’s game stopped, and a lot of players were questioning what was going to happen to their pay. There was so much stress and anxiety around the game at that time and it felt really unfair on everyone, then even further down the pyramid seeing clubs just folding because they were so heavily dependent on men’s clubs, and they couldn’t afford to put it into the men’s. I could see the pyramid was built on sand, I was living in St Albans and I looked at clubs in those areas. How could I help a club like Luton Town who weren’t even really associated with the club, then I looked at Worcester because I still have family here.

“They were in Tier 5, but no real information on the website. I had conversations because they were fan-owned, speaking about the women, me coming in and taking over and under my ownership so I could run it in my own way.”

In March 2021, Allison moved home and created Worcester City Women as a legal entity, “entirely separate” from any men’s team, as she puts it.

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