Ange Postecoglou said on Wednesday that his Tottenham team are "progressing in all aspects of our game" despite a wildly inconsistent Premier League campaign so far.
Spurs, who travel to face Bournemouth on Thursday, are seventh in the table with six wins, five defeats and two draws in their opening 13 games – just three points off the top four.
They hammered champions Manchester City 4-0 late last month after being defeated 2-1 at home by struggling Ipswich.
Postecoglou last week launched an impassioned defence of his attacking approach, saying he was "not interested" in pragmatism after they conceded a late equaliser in a 2-2 draw against Roma.
The Australian said on the eve of the Bournemouth game that his side are heading in the right direction.
"We're progressing in all our aspects of our game," he said. "We've scored a lot of goals but even defensively, we're much more consistent than we were last year.
"The fact that we have got quite a few significant absences is just something we have to work through.
"We had a very similar scenario last year and it's fair to say we sort of ground our way through it and we're kind of doing that at the moment."
Despite his upbeat message, Postecoglou admitted there was room for improvement.
"We've obviously had a couple of games where we've been not great in executing our football, those two games in particular against Palace (a 1-0 defeat) and Ipswich we fell well below what we wanted to do," he said.
"That's probably again an area we've tried to iron out but aside from that, it's progress in all areas."