It was a measure of Ange Postecoglou’s frustration, of his despair, that he said on more than one occasion that the journalists who cover Tottenham could join in with training and not look out of place. Just when the fans thought they had hit rock bottom, eh?

The manager’s point was that his injury-ravaged squad was not really training at all and the situation was very much a live one up to the FA Cup defeat at Aston Villa on 9 February. They were simply shadow boxing in between the matches, which came thick and fast – there had been only one midweek without a game since the November international break. Postecoglou’s absentees were sometimes in double digits and he worried about pushing those still standing too hard.

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To listen to Postecoglou now, as he looked forward to the Premier League visit of Manchester City on Wednesday night, was to hear somebody who had emerged from a nightmare. If plenty of the walking wounded are back, with others on the way, then so too is Postecoglou’s optimism. Post-Villa, there have been two clear midweeks and two league wins against Manchester United (home) and Ipswich (away). Before that, results were poor for a prolonged period.

Postecoglou has had the right numbers in training, no longer needing to make them up by calling across to the youth team. And, crucially, he has had the right intensity. One of Postecoglou’s basic requirements is that his sessions mimic the conditions of a match. For so long, it was not possible. Now it is. At last, Postecoglou feels he has a basis.

“When you’re going through that period of so many games and with the small squad because of our injury situation, we couldn’t really train,” he said. “You want to rectify things and the best place to rectify things is on the training track and we just couldn’t do it. You try to replicate it [a match] but at a really low tempo and it wasn’t realistic. Whereas now …

“We saw the benefits in the Ipswich game. I think that’s as fluent as we’ve been in the middle‑to-front third in terms of our football and it’s because we did so much work leading up to it during the week. The players were able to train. It’s also that we’d got players back. We’re not training with the young players from our academy. We’re actually training as a squad, which again means the level is really good.”

Postecoglou joked that he would love to restart doing some double sessions. He was joking, wasn’t he? What he made plain was that he had to balance the needs of the recently returned players, those who are champing at the bit to work, and the ones who have been through the wringer. It was significant to hear him agree that the intensity of the training was back at the top level.

“Yeah, but not just intensity,” Postecoglou said. “The kind of match [replication] work that we’ve been able to do that we’ve had to steer away from because we had to protect the players. You try to simulate match conditions so players can find solutions in those areas. You can’t do that when you try to protect them from the physical load. And it’s also the quality of players we had.

“Now we can work on our patterns, whether that’s in an attacking sense or defensive sense in match-like situations and at a match tempo, [albeit] not for the duration. The players would much rather feel like they’ve had a good session rather than go out there knowing they’re going to have to hold things back because there’s another game in a day’s time.”

After City, Spurs do not play again until next Thursday when they go to the Netherlands to face AZ Alkmaar in the first leg of their Europa League last-16 tie. There will be more time for proper work on the training pitch. After that, they host Bournemouth in the league on the Sunday before playing the second leg against AZ on the Thursday that follows.

Postecoglou has welcomed back Guglielmo Vicario, Destiny Udogie, James Maddison, Brennan Johnson and Wilson Odobert. Timo Werner is also back to fitness; he was just not named in the squad at Ipswich. What everybody wants to know is when Cristian Romero, Micky van de Ven and Dominic Solanke will return.

“The first European game … I’d say there’s [only] an outside chance for any of the three of them but certainly they’ll be back training fully by then,” Postecoglou said. “Then we’ve got Bournemouth and I reckon much better odds for that. And, definitely, by the second European game they should all be available to play.

“Dom’s the only one where we’ve got to be careful because he’s ahead of schedule so I don’t want to push that in case we need to pull the reins in a bit. But with Romero and Van de Ven that’s the plan.”

Radu Dragusin and Richarlison are longer-term casualties and Ben Davies will not play against City as he manages a knock. It says a lot that Postecoglou no longer has to press him into service.

It has been a strange season for Spurs, one of the quirks being that they have the opportunity to beat City for the third time, having done so in the league and Carabao Cup. They have scored more league goals than City (53 to 52) and have the same +15 goal difference. To Postecoglou, they are good indicators. He wants rather more.