Ange Postecoglou was at least able to maintain his sense of humour amid the ridiculous situation engulfing Tottenham right now.

The Spurs boss arrived in Germany on Wednesday evening and was driven straight from the airport to the small town of Sinsheim. This is where Hoffenheim's PreZero Arena sits, close to a technical museum that proudly boasts a Concorde and Tupolev, the two forms of old supersonic passenger aircraft, as well as various tanks, land speed record-breaking vehicles and the largest collection of Formula One cars on the continent.

Postecoglou might have been half-tempted to hop into one of those supersonic jets or land speed record-breakers to get as far away from the chaos that is Tottenham Hotspur as possible.

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Yet he is a fighter and here the Australian was again sat at a press conference, his 11th in the space of 19 days, having to explain that now Spurs have 14 unavailable players for their current fixture in the Europa League in Germany. He was also having to grimly admit the potentially shambolic scenario that after almost two months of calling for help for his squad it can't be ruled out that none is coming.

When asked if there was the possibility that not a single outfield player could arrive this month, despite his constant stream of pleas for help for the overused tiny group of players still fit and dwindling by the day, Postecoglou had no choice but to admit that it wasn't out of the question.

"Yeah, potentially. The club is working hard to try to get some help for the players, but as far as I know, there’s nothing imminent, but things happen quickly in the last week of the window so still hopeful," he said with the demeanour of a man who didn't actually sound that hopeful.

That Spurs could potentially get to the end of this window without being able to bring in even one outfield player to help their manager and players is inconceivable. That they have reached 23 days into it without having a previously conceived plan of action, with counter plans, that has been executed is mind-blowing.

It comes in a week when the Deloitte Football Money League 2025 was published, showing Tottenham as having made the ninth largest revenue figure in the sport in the 2023/24 season with €615million (£520million) coming in and at the same time it also showed that the north London club's wage bill was down to only 42% of revenue at £220million despite bringing in more commercial revenue than their rivals in the capital.

For context, Arsenal's wage percentage of revenue is 53%, while current table-toppers Liverpool is 63% and at the other end of the scale Aston Villa's is 96% of their revenue.

It's also worth noting that Tottenham's wage percentage will only have decreased in the 12 months since, by a fair margin as well, after many high earners departed and were replaced mostly by teenagers.

Spurs fans are weary enough from this season without seeing other clubs strengthening their squads as the Lilywhites fail to do so despite Postecoglou and his players being on their knees and there clearly being the financial capacity to do so.

The Tottenham boss was asked whether the club needed to learn from this season and how having four competitions to play in required a far larger squad.

"Squad numbers are going to stay the same, it’s not like they’re increasing. If you’re going to play this much football you should be increasing squad numbers, is my belief," he said of the game in general. "It doesn’t matter what strategies you put in place. If you want to compete at this level and happen to do well in all competitions there’s no other way to counteract it.

"You have to rotate your team, you have to have virtually two separate line-ups. We haven’t been able to do that. Some of that was because of the injury toll earlier in the season and that’s accumulated and that’s created this scenario now where we’re having to play the same players consecutively.

"I don’t think it’s a matter of the club’s strategy or recruiting, I think it’s just the sheer numbers, a scenario where we’ve got limited numbers for all competitions. It doesn’t take much if you get two or three injuries, particularly if you get them in similar areas. That adds a load to the existing group, and you’ve got to factor international football into that.

"It’s not like they get a break between seasons. The calendar’s really ramped up. In the last five years the game has changed a lot from the previous 50 games. There’s going to be some issues if the game keeps changing this quickly."

Some suggest that the Australian's methods have caused the injuries and there's certainly evidence to show that hamstring injuries occur early on as players adjust to his brand of football and the sprinting involved. Postecoglou himself admits that's a natural by-product in the early months of his tenure at clubs.

However, there have also been a number of freakish injuries, including Guglielmo Vicario colliding with Manchester City's Savinho and fracturing his foot or Dominic Solanke taking a shot away from contact and hitting it awkwardly and twisting his knee. There have also been too many re-injuries with players coming back and departing soon after with a new injury, often different ones.

Postecoglou is not pushing the remaining players hard in training. Pedro Porro told football.london this week in an exclusive interview that there is so much recovery time and days off given to them and individual regimes to help them find any semblance of freshness that there's no time for intense sessions.

Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven are both expected to return to full training within the next seven to 10 days and a BBC interview with sports scientist Anton McElhone, who worked for Postecoglou at Celtic and at Spurs under Mauricio Pochettino, also gave an insight into the Australian's methods.

"Ange is very clear 'this is how I do it at each club.' The players will adapt to it over the months. It was a collaboration. He wanted us delivering the philosophy of 'football first' - everything must start and end with the ball," he said.

"Ange is very good at giving players time off, time to reflect. The training volume is good. Ange has been noted for his tactical style, and he's a very strong leader on how he gets things on to the pitch. How he does it at different clubs without the same staff is incredible."

He added: "At Celtic, after six months Postecoglou could rotate the front five at 60 or 65 minutes to keep the freshness for the 60-game season. At Tottenham he's probably found that a lot more difficult because I don't think the strength in depth is the same as other Premier League clubs like Manchester City and Chelsea.

"Look at the evolution at Celtic under Postecoglou, we had a three-month period of sustaining injuries every week, mostly hamstring injuries. We had to get to the winter break to reset. As the players adapted to the demands of the system, the game fluctuation changed rather than that constant 'basketball' up and down the pitch, the team was able to control one half of the pitch more. So that stopped the centre-backs having to run in behind as often.

"As the game model and philosophy settled, that reduced injuries. At the moment, that is the problem at Tottenham. He has not got the squad. They have had a change of medical staff in the background in the last year as well, on top of all the other issues."

It probably feels like one punch after another right now for Postecoglou but he has been able to keep his sense of humour amid the gloom.

At Wednesday night's press conference at the PreZero Stadium, the first thing that tickled the Tottenham head coach was an unusual set-up that involved, rather than a microphone being handed around to ask the questions, an assistant off to the side would instead hold a 10ft pole across the rows of seats with a microphone attached in front of the reporter.

So when football.london went to ask the first question and couldn't help giggling in sympathy as the poor young girl across the room struggled to hold the long contraption in the right place in front of them, it made Postecoglou chuckle as well.

Matters were then not helped when football.london asked three questions in a row, which Postecoglou answered, before the exasperated and forgotten German translator interrupted and quite rightly said that he couldn't remember so much if we didn't stop for him.

The next moment that amused Postecoglou also came via the translator after the unfortunate fellow began to get a dry throat and had to stop to cough for a moment.

Without missing a beat, the Spurs boss said: "We've lost the translator as well. Even my translator is injured. Everyone just stay away from me!"

The poor German was utterly confused and had to have the joke explained after the press conference by the reporters, but at least Postecoglou is trying to keep things light amid a difficult situation for him.

The question now is whether his players can give him something to smile about on Thursday night at Hoffenheim and whether the club can make that an even wider grin with some help finally from above.

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