Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou admits he is happy to see players return from injury.
Spurs were missing a glut of first teamers in recent weeks, but are starting to get personnel back in the squad.
After a 4-1 win over Newcastle United on Sunday at home, Postecoglou spoke about Micky van de Ven and James Maddison returning soon.
He told reporters: Yeah, look I have been struggling with that a little bit all week because we're trying to build something here and part of that is through the tough periods to not allow the lads too much latitude in terms of excuses but the reality is and I have probably been too hard on them in retrospect but we got decimated after the Chelsea game. And it is no coincidence that now we are getting some players back that we are starting to look a lot stronger. I will not speak on Eddie Howe's behalf but I can see what he's going through and in this league if you have one or two key players out, you're going to struggle.
You mentioned James and Micky but you missed out Bentancur, how important Perisic was and when we won those games late, he was the one providing and Manor Solomon. I could go on and on. It sounds like excuses but that is the reality of the Premier League and you don't need too much analyse to see why in the last few weeks we haven't been as conclusive in our results as we were earlier in the year. And when I analyze the performances, I've asked guys and I don't know how many positions Deki Kulusevski has played. Ben Davies has turned into a center-back now, we had Emerson at center-back, so all these kind of things, there is some logic as to why we slipped a little bit.
In the Premier League if you slip a little bit, that's enough and hopefully we're coming out the other side and just having Richy and Pape back today, making those two changes after a midweek game and Eddie couldn't make any changes, I just felt we had more energy and legs and we needed it today."