Harry Redknapp knows as well as anyone how important it is to avoid a bad start to the season.After all, the manager landed his job at Tottenham on the back of predecessor Juande Ramos's failure to engineer a single victory from the club's opening eight league games last season.
So little wonder then, that the unexpected loss to injury of his three main centre-backs - Ledley King, Jonathan Woodgate and Michael Dawson - for the beginning of the campaign carries an added edge at White Hart Lane and has injected an even greater note of urgency into Redknapp's recruitment plans.
Of course, the former Portsmouth manager's impact last season was such that it is inconceivable that Spurs could find themselves in a similar predicament this time around.
But if the north London club learned anything from last year's woeful start, it was the importance of getting the main transfer business out the way before the end of the August 31 deadline.
Ramos may have had many failings, but he wasn't helped by the loss of Robbie Keane, the protracted exit of Dimitar Berbatov and the ill-advised late deal to bring in Roman Pavlyuchenko from Spartak Moscow.
Somehow you can't see the same thing happening with Redknapp in charge but even he conceded at a news conference this week he had "no one on the radar" after being suddenly forced to prioritise a new central defender having previously focused his so far unsuccessful efforts on bringing in a new forward.
Redknapp may not have expected to lose all three centre backs but the nature of King and Woodgate's injuries in particular give some cause for concern.
King's knee is notoriously fragile with the defender somehow managing to maintain an outstanding level of performance last season despite being unable to train or play from one weekend to the next. Alarmingly, however, he is already troubled by the joint despite a summer of rest and having done nothing but light running after reporting back.
Woodgate's groin is also troublesome, and the player has flown out to see a specialist in the USA after an operation failed to resolve a long-standing problem.
Dawson's achilles injury appears less problematic, but with his two colleagues sidelined with more concerning injuries, Redknapp may find he is looking for something more than a stop-gap replacement to tide him over the first month of the season.
In-house options look thin, with midfielder Tom Huddlestone, right-back Vedran Corluka and untried French youngster Dorian Dervitte likely to be in contention for the Premier League opener with Liverpool on August 16.
But as the manager himself admitted: "I can't sit back and let seven or eight games go by and not have a centre half - especially eight games!"
