Ange Postecoglou believes Djed Spence can now push on to become a regular starting player at Tottenham and has said that so many players missed training this week through illness that he almost had to join in.

Postecoglou revealed on Friday that an illness bug has hit Spurs on top of the nine already missing players for Saturday's Premier League match with Newcastle, meaning the Tottenham boss is going to have to put together whatever team he can to face Eddie Howe's in-form side.

The 59-year-old was reluctant to say exactly how many players were unable to train this week due to the bug that has hit players harder within the camp.

"Just a few. We’ll see. Fair to say I almost got involved in training yesterday, which is not a good thing!" said the former Australian international left-back before saying about who will be fit for Saturday's starting line-up. "It’s illness so you almost work hour by hour. I’m hoping it’s not too bad but it’s obviously disrupted our training. Hopefully we’ll be ok.

When asked again how many were missing from training, he simply said with a smile: "A few mate, a few."

One player set to get plenty of game time in the weeks ahead due to the absent players at Spurs - notably Destiny Udogie's six weeks out with a hamstring injury - is Spence. The 24-year-old has turned his time around at the club after looking set to leave last summer and has now made nine appearances so far this season, scoring once and grabbing two assists. Postecoglou laid the the praise for the turnaround at Spence's door.

"Djed, a lot of it is just down to him. He’s really knuckled down. He’s had to be patient. I think he’s been really good for us. Even in tough times you get these spurts of opportunities for others that maybe wouldn’t have happened," he said. "The reality is with everyone healthy maybe he wouldn’t have got the opportunity and in January we’d be looking at a different scenario for him, but right now, he’s performing really well.

"I was disappointed he got sent off against Forest because he could have helped us last week. He is very important for us. With Destiny going down, especially. Not because he's available but he’s played well, made an impact. Maybe he senses the opportunity to become not just part of Tottenham on a permanent basis in his own mind, where he feels settled, but now pushing to be a starting player and I think he has the capacity to do that."

Postecoglou was asked whether there was something lacking from Spence's attitude or game that had held him back before.

"I don’t think there was something missing. There was possibly a reason he wasn’t settled but at the start of pre-season I mentioned there was an opportunity for him here," explained the Spurs boss. "We were going to give him that opportunity and not necessarily get him out on loan.

"The rest was up to him and a lot of that is how he dealt with the fact he had to train hard everyday without a lot of prospect of playing. He impressed everyone with his attitude towards that. Maybe in the past he was a little bit impatient, maybe his attitude wasn’t great in terms of the fact he wasn’t playing and wasn't feeling like a regular.

"This year he’s had to bide his time and he’s done that in the best possible way and waited for his opportunity, and now when he’s got it, he’s grown. Some of it is maturity as well. He’s not a young boy any more and probably feels like if he’s going to have a Tottenham career now is the time to grab that, and I think he has done that."

James Maddison has been in and out of Postecoglou's team in recent weeks and the head coach said it's rotation in one area where he has extra bodies and admitted that the vice-captain was set to start in the 2-2 draw against Wolves last weekend but was another victim of the current illness bug.

"He was due to play last week but he was sick so I had to change the team on the day and leave him on the bench. He was ill on the day so..." he explained. "The reason he’s still doing well is because I’ve got midfield numbers I’ve been able to rest him a little bit. I don’t think any player can play the volume of games we’re playing at the moment, and the way we want to play, and maintain performance.

"I don’t think it’s feasible. I don’t think there’s anything in the way Madders is playing that would mean we would get more game-time. I still think the key with Madders is to keep him fit, keep him healthy, keep him sharp and that’s by not playing every game, especially with the programme we’ve got.

"When he’s played this year, his goal tally is strong, he’s always impacted the game and that’s what we need him to keep doing. I don’t think that means he’ll play more, I don’t think it’s feasible for anyone. At the moment, the only ones we’re playing regularly are the ones we’ve got no real options for. We have to play them all the time.

"I’d love to give Dom Solanke a rest, I’d love to give Kulusevski a rest, I’d love to give Radu and Archie a rest, because I think that would help improve performance, but it’s just the cycle we’re in."

On Maddison's fitness after that illness, Postecoglou added: "He’s better, he’s trained, it was still good to give him a couple of days away from training and everything, but he was better. He trained anyway."

So what did the Australian make of the midfielder being ill, coming off the bench for the final half hour and then going to the World Darts Championships down the road at Alexandra Palace with Brennan Johnson? Some Tottenham fans took umbrage at Maddison's appearance there after the frustrating late conceded goal to throw away two points to Wolves.

"He wasn't doing the darts. Yeah, I've got no problem with that. I've got no problem with the players having lives," said Postecoglou. "It's a lot different trying to play a game of football and living a life. I don't see any problem with that and I don't think it hurt him.

"Like I said he wasn't 100 per cent and it was a game where we needed someone to be 100 per cent. He was still well enough to play so it wasn't like he was bed-ridden. If he was bed-ridden, didn't turn up to the game and then went to the darts, there may be an issue there, but I had no issue with that."

With all of the injuries and suspensions this season and now an illness bug, Postecoglou must be close to tearing his hair out.

"I’d be no good bald, my wife would definitely leave me!" he admitted. "I’ve never been this kind guy who is ‘woe is me’ and ‘can anything else go wrong?’. It’s a hell of a challenge. I keep telling the guys in there that it’s just going to make the story better and more interesting at the end, wherever we end up.

"These things go in cycles sometimes when you just feel like, ‘Oh my god, what else?’ Every time I get a message or an update, what else could possible go wrong? But I really believe that all these things are just temporary, they’re a good test of character, they’re a good test of resolve, of resilience.

"I still think within that context that there is still opportunity for growth. We’ll get through it. I’ve got a really resilient group of players who are refusing to make excuses. They’re working as hard as anything, that’s all you can ask for. Eventually we’ll get over this. Who knows, they do go in cycles.

"There’s been times I’ve won things and I’ve thought ‘I don’t know how that happened’. The footballing gods were smiling on us. I don’t question it then because I think we deserve the success, and I don’t question it now. It’s just where we’re at."

If this depleted Spurs side are to get something positive against Newcastle then they will have to end their all-too familiar pattern of conceding first at home, something they were also known for under Antonio Conte. Postecoglou does not believe that theme is anything to do with his side starting slowly.

"Some of it, I don’t know, it’s context… I rarely think those things are an occurrence because of something that’s really tangible. There’s always reasons for those things. I don’t think we’re slow starters. It’s not like we don’t create chances," he said. "A lot of these games, maybe not at the weekend, where we’ve fallen behind we’ve had the best chance to score first and we haven’t.

"I can remember at least three of them in recent times. We’ve had unbelievable chances in the first two minutes of the game to go ahead and we don’t, then the opposition goes and scores. There’s always context to that.

"But I think it is important at home that it does make a big difference if you can start strong and get the first goal because it helps you build momentum into a game. For us, going a goal behind, even though our propensity to come back is still strong, it’s not helpful, particularly in the current situation. It requires a hell of a lot more energy that we don’t need to be using right now."

With the current lack of numbers in the squad, Tottenham's summer transfer window with Dominic Solanke the only senior first team player signed along with a batch of teenagers continues to look like an incomplete work. Postecoglou however does not hold any regrets over who came through the door.

"No, because hindsight is an easy thing but I still feel the players we brought in…nobody will tell me Dom Solanke or Archie Gray or Lucas Bergvall or Wilson [Odobert], obviously we’ve hardly seen him, are not good acquisitions for us. In the world of hindsight everything looks so much simpler and clearer but I live in the real world," he said.

"I think the business we did was good. Medium and long term it will be fantastic for this football club, I’ve got no doubt about that, we got some great players in. We tried to do some other deals that didn’t happen but that’s because they weren’t the right ones for us or we couldn’t make them happen.

"I didn’t expect to have this kind of attrition in terms of the players. Even if say, two of all our defenders, or if it was Vic and one central defender were fit for this period I’m sure we wouldn’t be in the spot we’re in."

When it was put to him that some of the shortages with more injury-prone players might have been foreseeable, he added: "Ok so Van de Ven, Radu Dragusin, Ben Davies – how many centre backs do we need to have? Seven? That’s not the real world, unless you’re saying those players aren’t good enough and they needed to move on to bring in a fifth centre back who if everyone was healthy wouldn’t play at all.

"We had enough cover but we didn’t expect to lose all those centre backs in one go. You name me a club if they lose their two starting centre backs plus their back-up centre back, would be flying right now or would have another centre back who could walk in and do the exact same job. Goalkeeper is always a tricky one because you want to bring in the right kind of goalkeeper, it’s not just about numbers.

"In hindsight everything looks clear, everyone wants someone to blame and sometimes it’s just the way things happen and you deal with what you have in front of you. The perfect plan does not exist. I understand the need for people to think that’s the way it should be, that this football club should have every base covered so every possibility that happens you have a solution for, but that’s not the reality."

Tottenham need to move in the January transfer window and they need to move quickly but Postecoglou is not getting frustrated at the lack of early movement that would have helped him against Newcastle.

"To get a deal done you need multiple parties to come to an agreement. There's so many moving parts to that. It's not just a matter of saying 'This is the player I want, let's go get him.' You have got to think about the player, their representatives, the other club, then that club thinks about replacing that player and they have to go deal with another club," he said.

"There's multiple moving parts, it's not an easy process, but all we can do is work as hard as we can to try and help the situation. That's what the club's doing. I can tell you the club is working as hard as it possibly can to get some help for the playing group, but not all of that is in our power."

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