LONDON -- Mauricio Pochettino is facing a defensive headache for Tuesday's Champions League match at Real Madrid, with Ben Davies struggling to be fit.
Davies missed Saturday's 1-0 win over Bournemouth at Wembley through illness and Pochettino said he is unlikely to be ready for the group game at the Santiago Bernabeu.
Asked if the Wales international would recover in time, Pochettino said: "It's difficult. I don't believe so. I hope that he can be involved again as soon as possible, but we need to assess him.
"But I am not so positive. I hope that I am wrong and tomorrow he can train with us."
England left-back Danny Rose, sidelined since January with a knee injury, returned to light training this week but he is still 'a few weeks' away from playing again, according to Pochettino.
Jan Vertonghen, who started at left-back against the Cherries and moved to left wing-back after the break could continue against Real, where Pochettino is expected to use a back-three.
But moving Eric Dier into defence could leave Spurs short in midfield, with Mousa Dembele (ankle) a doubt and Victor Wanyama out with a knee problem.
On Spurs' first league win at Wembley in their fourth attempt, Pochettino added: "It's so good because I can avoid you [the media] now! Hopefully we don't need to talk about it all season.
"Only we need time to perform as well as we can here.
"It was so important to get the win. It wasn't a great performance. We made some mistakes in our positional game. We had a lot of possession but you could see it was difficult to break them down. We changed our set up a bit in the second half.
"The team was good. The collective performance was good but when individual players play well, you [the media] must focus on that."