Ange Postecoglou is counting down the days until he has his first-choice centre-back pairing back available to him. The Tottenham boss has had to deal without his key duo for long periods this season and it has hit Spurs hard.
With the club 12th in the Premier League, a number of injured players are coming back into the fold, with Guglielmo Vicario and James Maddison returning to the starting lineup in Sunday's win over Manchester United.
Micky van de Ven is the one the majority of Spurs fans want to see return most, with the quick centre-back integral to the way Postecoglou wants to play with his high defensive line.
And the Dutchman is not far away now, having teased everyone with a 45-minute return against Elfsborg in the Europa League at the end of January, only to not be seen since.
Speaking last week, the Spurs head coach said: "Micky, Cuti (Cristian Romero) and Dom [Solanke], again, we’re looking at the next two or three weeks for them. They’re going well.
"With Micky we made a decision, and I was certainly the catalyst of that, to just have a look at exactly beyond the injury how we can get him back in a good spot. He is doing some different things and working with some different people it’s not as much about the injury as about the mechanics of him because we want him back and we want him back in a real good space."
The back end of three weeks would see Van de Ven, Romero and Solanke all return on the weekend of March 8, with Tottenham taking on Bournemouth on Sunday, March 9. That will be Spurs' last game for two weeks, with the first international break of 2025 coming in after that.
And that's where Postecoglou could be handed a big problem. Should Van de Ven return to the starting lineup before the international break, he could be in line for a call-up to the Netherlands national team - the same could be said of Romero and Solanke.
Postecoglou and the entire Tottenham fanbase would prefer to see Van de Ven rested thoroughly and not go out on international duty, but that may not be the case and could hand Spurs a real problem.