Injured Tottenham pair James Maddison and Micky van de Ven ruled out for remainder of 2023

Tottenham pair James Maddison and Micky van de Ven have been ruled out for at least the remainder of the year.

Maddison dropped out of the England squad on Friday due to the ankle injury picked up in Monday’s 4-1 home defeat to Chelsea — a match in which Van de Ven was also substituted with a severe hamstring injury.

Neither player will require surgery on their respective injuries, but Postecoglou will be without two key players for a busy schedule into 2024.

Postecoglou said: "There's a fair bit happened after Monday night. Micky with a hamstring injury [which] we knew was fairly significant. We're looking at a couple of months [out] into the new year.

"Madders is a lot worse than we first thought, it was bad the next day. Again into the New Year with him."

Tottenham are now left with a crisis at centre-back for Saturday's trip to Wolves, with Van de Ven sidelined and Cristian Romero beginning a three-match ban for his red card in Monday's derby.

Eric Dier deputised against the Blues along with midfielder Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and both could again come in, while 18-year-old summer recruit Ashley Phillips could also be called upon for his debut.

With the number of defensive absentees, Postecoglou was asked whether he was tempted to change formation and style of play as a one-off. He responded: “There is always the temptation, but apart from chocolate I am pretty good at not giving into temptation."

“[There are] not many times in my career when you have such a disruption for one game”, the Aussie added. “We’ve lost four or five starters in one game — three of our back four. That’s where we get affected more than anything else.

“If it was just Micky, you’d miss him because of the qualities he has. It wouldn’t disrupt us as much. But we’ve got to bring in three different players in a back four, and that’s the big challenge for us.”

Richarlison is another who will be missing this weekend after going under the knife in a pre-planned surgery. Postecoglou explained: “Richy had the operation, which we’d kind of scheduled, because Richy has been battling with it from day one.

“We thought with the international break coming up we thought it would be a good time to get it done. He should only be a month if everything goes well so not too long after the international break.”