It is nearly three months since Tottenham’s disastrous defeat by Chelsea, which ended their record breaking start to the season and plunged Ange Postecoglou into a selection crisis which is only now easing.

The Spurs head coach has had to contend with a succession of injuries, suspensions, illnesses and other absences, but tonight’s FA Cup fourth-round tie against holders Manchester City feels like the start of a fresh chapter, with Postecoglou finally mulling over some positive selection headaches.

James Maddison hobbled off against Chelsea with ankle ligament damage but has trained all week and is “ready to start”, according to Postecoglou; Cristian Romero, Micky van de Ven and Rodrigo Bentancur are all fit; and January signings Timo Werner and Radu Dragusin are getting up to speed.

Postecoglou is now able to look back on the last few months with a degree of distance and believes it has been good for the development of his squad.

“The fact that we’ve gone through it, I think it’s accelerated our growth,” he said. “If we had everything run smoothly, you’d be worrying it would hit us at some stage and how are we going to react to it.

"We could have flown through this first half of the [season] and I’m sure all the questions to me would’ve been, ‘What happens when there’s a hiccup?’

“I wouldn’t have been able to answer, but I already know. I’ve seen the resilience, and part of that is how I’ve dealt with those absences.”

As Postecoglou pointed out, Spurs are still without captain Heung-min Son, who remains at the Asian Cup with South Korea, as well as Yves Bissouma and Pape Sarr, away at the Africa Cup of Nations.

Son has scored in four of City’s five straight defeats at Spurs’s new stadium and opened the scoring in the thrilling 3-3 draw in Manchester last month, and he will be an enormous miss tonight, even if Erling Haaland’s absence somewhat levels the field.

The Korean is also the glue in Postecoglou’s young squad, but the manager says vice-captain Romero has assumed Son’s leadership role.

“There’s definitely a void there, but with all these things there’s opportunities,” the manager said. “That’s where Romero has really stepped up. You just feel it around the place. He knows that Sonny’s not here and he knows what Sonny does on a daily basis.

“Sonny gets around everyone in the building and says, ‘How you going?’ and Cristian’s doing that now. In training, he’s a lot more vocal than he was in the past. That’s the beauty of it. There is a void because you’re missing one of your leaders, but he’s stepped up.

“There’s been others, too. Vic [Guglielmo Vicario] in goal, he’s stepped up. There’s a really good feeling among the group at the moment. They understand that because of what we’ve been through, ‘Okay, man down, but somebody fills that void and we keep going until they come back’.”

By the time Spurs play next, at Brentford on Wednesday, South Korea might have exited the Asian Cup, while one of Sarr and Bissouma will definitely return after February 3, when Mali and Senegal are scheduled to meet in an AFCON quarter-final, provided both win their last-16 matches.

Spurs remain hopeful of further strengthening their squad, but Postecoglou is not naive enough to expect plain sailing from here.

“There’s always a challenge and if it wasn’t injuries it would have been something else,” he added. “Whatever those challenges are, there will be more ahead. Hopefully, we’re over this injury crisis, but there’ll be other challenges, trust me.

“For me, the good thing is we’ve handled the first one in a manner when I’ve seen the team grow and that’s got to be our objective ahead."