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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Sport
George Flood

Ange Postecoglou issues new Tottenham transfer update amid injury crisis

Ange Postecoglou insists that he is not yet fixating upon the January transfer window after a costly week for Tottenham.

Spurs suffered their first Premier League defeat of the season at home by Chelsea in a truly chaotic London derby on Monday night, but more damaging than the 4-1 scoreline was the loss of several more key players to either injury or suspension.

Postecoglou has confirmed that both James Maddison (ankle) and Micky van de Ven (hamstring) will be sidelined until the New Year with bad injuries suffered against Chelsea, while Cristian Romero and Destiny Udogie are now suspended after their respective red cards in that game.

Richarlison is also expected to miss a few weeks after undergoing groin surgery this week, with Ivan Perisic already out for the season and the likes of Manor Solomon and Ryan Sessegnon also on the sidelines.

Injury-hit Spurs at least have the likes of defenders Ben Davies and Pedro Porro fit to face Wolves in the top-flight on Saturday.

So many absentees already has some fans and pundits speculating if Tottenham will be eager to quickly re-enter the transfer market in January in order to boost a small squad for what they hope will be a sustained title push, with the club having appointed technical director Johan Lange and chief scout Rob Mackenzie from Aston Villa in recent months in a restructure of their recruitment team.

And while Postecoglou admits that January window planning is already well underway, he insists he is only focused on the games ahead for now.

Tottenham appointed Johan Lange as their new technical director back in October (Getty Images)

"Look, my focus is that we still have a fair few games between now and January. And that's where my attention has got to be," he told reporters at his pre-Wolves press conference on Friday.

"The planning in terms of January has been in the works for a while. As I said last week, Johan is in the building and that's his area.

"He's getting his department together. He'll get all the information, and we just have to keep working to the plan we started with.

"I've said right at the start we've only had one window trying to build a team - it was never going to happen in that one window, but obviously we have to plan.

"Whether that's January or the summer or beyond and we'll work through that. But what's important to me is that we still have a significant number of games between now and January. And we want to make sure we're performing at a good level."

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