have lost three more players to injury while Cristian Romero is not likely to feature against on Sunday, with new signing Radu Dragusin potentially getting an immediate debut.
The north Londoners have a host of players unavailable, either through injury or participation at this month’s Africa Cup of Nations as well as the Asian Cup, with Ben Davies, Giovani Lo Celso and Dane Scarlett the latest to pick up knocks.
Romero has been out of action since picking up a hamstring strain against Everton just before Christmas, but he was spotted back in training and .
But the game may come slightly too soon for the Argentine, which could present Dragusin – who arrived in a £25million deal from Genoa this week – with the opportunity to start straight away, with Postecoglou confident all the necessary paperwork has been completed.
‘From the last game, Ben Davies came off with a hamstring issue. Probably looking for a month or so for him out,’ said Postecoglou at his pre-match press conference on Friday.
‘Gio Lo Celso similarly – though harder to diagnose where he’s at at the moment. We’ll send him for further tests on Monday to see exactly what the issue is. He’ll miss this weekend.
‘Dane Scarlett has picked up an injury as well in training so he’ll miss out. And that’s it really.
‘Coming back… the only one that’s joined the main group today is Romero. And that’s it I think. Everyone else who’s injured is still training away from the main group.’
Asked if Romero is close to coming back into the team, Postecoglou added: ‘He’s just started training so fair to say it might be a bit quick this weekend.’
On whether Dragusin’s work permit will be sorted in time for him to play on Sunday, he replied: ‘Yeah, from what I’ve been told and it’s not my area, but from what I’ve been told we’re pretty confident he’ll be available for Sunday.’
Speaking about the qualities that convinced Spurs to sign the Romanian defender, Postecoglou continued: ‘Obviously we know that position was a priority position for us going into the January transfer window. We let Davinson Sanchez go after the window closed so we knew if the right opportunity came in January we needed to bring somebody in.
‘We did a fair amount of work on that and when we got closer to the time when we had to make a decision about it, Johan and his team did a lot of background work on it. I think he’s a good fit for us from a football perspective.
‘He certainly has some great attributes as a young player and from my chats with him as a person he’s come in with the right motivations about why he wants to take the next step and why Tottenham is the right club for him.
‘I think he’ll fit in really well with the group at the moment. Quite a few of them are in the same sort of age bracket. And part of that is hopefully we can build a team that grows together and I’m sure he’ll be a good fit for that.’
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