Enzo Maresca’s press conference ahead of this Sunday’s game against Leicester has just been released, although we’re not quite sure when it was recorded.
It seems to be from earlier this week, with the late night return from Copenhagen last night making it tricky to squeeze the typical Friday lunchtime effort in.
This of course makes is a slightly out of date report for injury news purposes, but it still gives us more insight than we got in the pre or post Copenhagen chats on a few players. Up front, Maresca discussed some of the recovery of some of his player:
“Wes[ley Fofana] is training with us already for more than ten days, so he is back. Benoit [Badiashile] also is back. Romeo [Lavia] has started to work with us. He’s still far from being 100%, but he’s started to work which us which is good. The rest they are still out – Nicolas [Jackson], Marc [Guiu] and Aaron [Anselmino].
Badiashile ticks off return; other important figures still far away
We ended up seeing Badiashile start last night’s game and play what appeared to be a pre-planned 45 minutes, which obviously means he’s not pretty much ready for Premier League selection. Fofana seems to be one step behind, but could get similar treatment in the second leg next week.
The really big misses for the team at the moment are Lavia and Jackson, and they both look like they won’t return until after the international break later this month, as initially thought.
We should be able to see off struggling Leicester without them, but getting them back is still vital for closing out this season well. Fofana was on the bench a week ago against Southampton, and so it’s certainly not impossible he starts this weekend.
