Chelsea have been handed a timely injury boost before their meeting with in-form Aston Villa as Est\u00eav\u00e3o and Liam Delap are available after recent layoffs. Est\u00eav\u00e3o had missed the club\u2019s last couple of matches, while Delap has been in and out of the side, his latest problem a shoulder injury sustained against Wolves.<\/p>\n
Injuries have been a feature of the season for the head coach. Maresca has also been without talisman Cole Palmer for a significant chunk of the campaign, with Palmer\u2019s workload managed by the man tipped to replace Pep Guardiola at Manchester City once the six-time Premier League winner rides off into the sunset. The manager has delivered cryptic messages in recent press conferences that suggested he is displeased with aspects of the club\u2019s ownership, and selection availability has added to his challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cEst\u00eav\u00e3o and also Liam Delap, they are both back,\u201d Maresca told the assembled journalists in his latest scrum on Wednesday. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know exactly how long Liam would be out for but he is back on Saturday, and we are happy to have both available.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another theme at the press briefing was Chelsea\u2019s reported interest in Antoine Semenyo. The club, which spent heavily on Alejandro Garnacho and Jamie Gittens in the summer, had enquired about Semenyo only to find the Ghana international is already in advanced talks with Manchester City. Maresca was asked to confirm the interest before the exchange moved to whether a new winger was needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m focused on Aston Villa ,\u201d he chuntered. \u201cI\u2019m not focused on players that can arrive, players that can leave. The only focus for me at this moment is the Aston Villa game. I think that for sure it will be a tough game, because they are doing fantastic, and we need to be focused on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
On his relationship with the club and squad depth he added: \u201cAgain, I know that I need to repeat every press conference exactly the same, but before Newcastle I spoke about my relation with the club, and I said that it\u2019s good,\u201d and \u201cI spoke about Est\u00eav\u00e3o and Delap back, and now I need to repeat. Before Newcastle I said that I\u2019m in love with the squad we have, and I don\u2019t think we need to do something. But again, the next one I will answer the same question again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aston Villa arrive having recorded a 10th win in a row, their first such run for 111 years, ensuring Saturday\u2019s contest will present a stern test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Est\u00eav\u00e3o and Liam Delap are back for Chelsea as Maresca eyes Saturday’s clash with Aston Villa. Weekend<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5345,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[711,190,172],"tags":[801,1089,319],"class_list":["post-5346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aston-villa","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-antoine-semenyo","tag-chelsea-struggles","tag-cole-palmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}