Every word Enzo Maresca said on Cole Palmer injury, surgery and Chelsea trip to Lincoln

Enzo Maresca has just completed his pre-match press conference ahead of Chelsea's Carabao Cup tie away at Lincoln City.

The Blues make the long trip up to the LNER Stadium tomorrow evening for the third round of the cup, with League One side Lincoln standing in the west Londoners' way. Maresca has just finished previewing the tie and football.london has compiled his quotes to bring you the full transcript:

What's the team news ahead of the game tomorrow and the latest on Cole?

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Yeah, Cole probably is the only one that we need to assess a little bit. The rest, they are okay. We are just recovering from last week when we played three games in a row.

With Cole is it just taking it game by game? There's no sort of long-term concerns about any fears of surgery given it's a groin or is it just game by game?

He did already a huge effort on last Saturday to try to play the game. Again, he tried Saturday morning, he did the test, he was okay but not 100%. But he wants to be there to help teammates to be there in that kind of game. But unfortunately then we had have 10 players and also it was painful so we decided to change it. And it's more day by day, week by week, game by game to see how it is and decide what we do.

Is the feeling that Saturday happened because of fatigue?

It depends what you mean by Saturday. Staying with 10 players after three minutes, I don't know. But the game is detected from the red card. When we were 10 against 10, we had almost 70% possession. When we were 11 against 10, probably we had 20%. I hopefully we don't have any more games with 10 players after three or four minutes because it's difficult for us but it's difficult for any club in the world to play 100 minutes with 10 players.

Jamie Carragher said Chelsea's goalkeeper and defence means they cannot win the title. What are your views on that?

I think, as I've said many times, anyone can say what they decide to say. It's not a problem. I think we improved a lot last season. For instance, if you see the last three or four tables in the last three or four years, we closed the gap with the first one, two or three. For me, this season, the main target is to continue to improve players, continue to improve the team and try to close that gap. This is, for me, the main focus for this season.

Is surgery can option for Palmer?

The medical staff, they didn't mention to me about surgery until today [meaning there has been no chat about it up until this point]. I don't know if in the next days or the next weeks, but I don't think so, to be honest.

Are Romeo Lavia and Benoit Badiashile back for this one?

No, no, they are not back for this game, unfortunately. They both took part in the session yesterday. That is good news. Hopefully, they can be available very soon, but they are not available for tomorrow. Again, Cole is the one. Then we have some players with small problems from already a long time, like Moi [Caicedo], like Joao [Pedro], that they are trying to manage a little bit themselves. But then the rest, they are okay.

Difficult with so many injuries?

No, for sure. It is a situation that we need to manage because if we have Moi with a small problem, and for instance Romeo is fit, we can decide, or Dario Essugo was fit, we can decide to give Moi some rest. But in this moment, Dario is injured, Romeo is injured, and again, we are in a new situation for us because of the Club World Cup, so we don't know how will be this season in terms of injury. I don't think it is random, the amount of injuries we have, and we need to try to learn and try to manage the situation.

Is it positive you can maybe give some academy debuts or give some young players a chance against Lincoln now?

Even if these are the games that worry me most, because you can slip very easily in these kind of games. Football is full of these kind of games and I am very worried about that. But for sure we have probably some few players from the academy like we always have done.