There will be an unusual sight for Ange Postecoglou as he walks out on to the training pitches at Hotspur Way on Wednesday - a larger contingent of Tottenham players.

Spurs' injury crisis has been long and damaging with 10 or more unavailable players for most matches and the Australian has had to turn to the same group of 11 or 12 outfield squad members pulling on their boots to play every three days or so for what has been nearly three months.

On Sunday, Postecoglou could not call upon 11 of his first team players for the FA Cup defeat at Aston Villa, with Richarlison and Radu Dragusin having become the most recent additions with a calf injury and anterior cruciate ligament damage respectively. The latter underwent successful surgery on Tuesday.

READ MORE: Why King Charles was at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with Daniel Levy and Son Heung-min

READ MORE: Tottenham shown what they missed out on but Ange Postecoglou has transfer answer of his own

After the game, the Tottenham head coach gave the rest of his overworked players Monday and Tuesday off to try to regain some energy ahead of a rare midweek without a match. Some players headed off abroad, such as Dejan Kulusevski who travelled to Rome, while others would have recuperated at home.

When they returned to the training pitches of Hotspur Way on Wednesday, they would have no doubt been lifted by the return of some of their team-mates.

The likes of Destiny Udogie, James Maddison, Wilson Odobert and Brennan Johnson are all tipped to be back on the grass with varying degrees of training intensity this week ahead of Sunday's match against Manchester United at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, while goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario is stepping up his efforts at Hotspur Way.

The returnees will be monitored closely this week to see which ones are ready to be included in the squad, particularly with the cases of Micky van de Ven and Cristian Romero proving so problematic with the centre-backs both returning twice, the second time Romero to training and Van de Ven to action, only to vanish back into the ether with further issues.

Postecoglou will hope at the least to have a few more options on his bench for Sunday's big match against Ruben Amorim's men.

"I'm just going to keep on working like I have. The ones who have been playing we've got to give them some time off. We've got the early part of the week and we'll give them some time off," Postecoglou explained on Sunday.

"The boys who are coming back, we'll get the opportunity to give them a whole week of training which is great. So come Tuesday we should have three or four who have been missing, we can give them a full week of training instead of a couple of sessions and then throwing them in.

"By the time we get to the back end of the week we should have something resembling a squad of players to prepare for a big game. That then folds into the following week when again we've got seven days and no midweek game to prepare for the next game.

"So that gives us a real good opportunity to get some work into the guys who have been out for quite a while and give some rest to the guys who have been going at it. So by the time we get back to being in Europe and having midweek games we'll be in a much better shape."

Listen to the latest episode of Gold & Guest Talk Tottenham by clicking here for in-depth Spurs chat on your preferred podcast platform.

Want breaking and top Tottenham stories sent straight to you? Join our Spurs WhatsApp community by clicking this link. If you're curious you can check out our privacy policy here.