Ange Postecoglou admits it is “hard to say” whether Spurs will sign another central defender in the January transfer window.
First-choice pair Cristian Romero and Micky Van de Ven have missed time through suspension and injury this season while Eric Dier has found himself out of favour since Postecoglou joined the club.
Van de Ven has trained with his team-mates this week having been out since November with a hamstring injury picked up in the 4-1 defeat to Chelsea and could potentially feature in the squad for the FA Cup clash with Burnley on Friday, but Romero remains sidelined with a hamstring problem of his own.
It means Postecoglou could be forced to again name a back four made up of players whose primary position is as a full-back, but asked whether the club will add reinforcements in the centre of defence this month the Spurs boss said: “It’s hard to say because I don’t get involved in that side of it,” he said.
“As I said leading into the window, we’ve got some objectives and some targets and we’re working towards that.
“People behind the scenes and in charge of those areas are working towards that and my role within that is when I’m sought for guidance and clarity on which way we need to go, I provide that.
“There are a lot of moving parts in a window like this. Like I said, January you don’t expect too much in terms of activity but again what I’ve said before is that every opportunity we have to strengthen the team, strengthen the squad, we should try and take.
“Depending on sort of the opportunities we have to do that this month, we’ll try and do.”