Araya Dennis: “I’m looking forward to growing as a player” | OneFootball

Araya Dennis is excited to learn and grow as a player as she embarks on a new journey at Hotspur Way.

The 18-year-old joined the Club in February, 2024, as she put pen to paper on her first professional contract before spending the second half of the 2023/24 campaign on loan at Crystal Palace.

The young forward spent her youth career at Arsenal and enjoyed a spell at Watford in the FA Women’s Championship, while featuring regularly for England at youth level, including most recently the Under-19s.

Following her loan spell with Palace, Araya is looking forward to getting started with the squad as they return to training next month for pre-season.

“I'm excited to have joined the Club,” she said. “I have always wanted to sign a professional contract and that finally happened with Spurs. I’m looking forward to playing alongside some outstanding individuals, players that I have always looked up to when I was younger.

“Robert [Vilahamn] has been good with the development of young players as well, seeing the likes of Matilda and Celin being able to play and express themselves on the pitch, that’s something that made my decision a lot easier at the time.

"I have already met everyone and, at the time I joined, I thought it would be a lot harder to settle in but every single one of them was lovely and they made it a lot easier for me, and with that, I was more confident with the decision I made and I’m really glad that I chose to come to the Club.”

Talking about learning from the experienced players in the group, Araya said: “It will be really important to be able to learn off players that have plenty of experience at WSL level.

“Hopefully I can have the players mentor me and guide me in the direction I should be going in, those are the kind of stuff I’m looking forward to, having those look out for me and help me grow as a player but also as a person.”

The England youth international made 20 appearances for Palace last term in the FA Women’s Championship, scoring twice, helping Laura Kaminski’s side, who spent three seasons at Spurs as an assistant manager, to promotion to the WSL for the first time in their history.

In what was just her first full season at senior level, Araya reflected on the importance of being exposed to first team football and how it has helped her development.

“I loved every minute there,” she added when looking back at her time at Selhurst Park. “It was really important to have that exposure to first team football, it got to the stage where I needed more experience at senior level to what I had previously because if I wanted to be playing at the highest level, I needed to have some sort of experience and being in the Championship exposed me to a lot of things that I haven’t been used to at academy football.

“The physicality of the league was something I had never been in before, the technical ability of the players was at a very high standard, so it was good for me to get used to that and bridge the gap to senior football.”

And she doesn’t want to stop learning there, targeting another season of development at Hotspur Way: “For the upcoming season, it’s more about progressing as much as possible and just growing, learning as much as I can and, hopefully, have a big impact in the team.”