Enzo Maresca makes surprising suggestion for academy star who could replace Moises Caicedo | OneFootball

Games are coming thick and fast this November, meaning press conferences are coming even thicker and even faster.

Enzo Maresca just did his one ahead of tomorrow night’s game against Leeds in the Premier League, with a few interesting topics to cover.

Santos could replace Caicedo

Andrey Santos playing for Chelsea. (Photo by Eddie Keogh/Getty Images)

Once the chat about team news was done, the coach was asked about a new challenge he has to take on in the next couple of weeks – playing without Moises Caicedo now that the Ecuador has a three game suspension for his red card against Arsenal on Sunday.

“Yeah, absolutely yes [it’s hard to replace Caicedo]. For sure, again, we are a better team with Cole, we are a better team with Moi, we are a better team with Levi [Colwill]. But when these players are not available, we try to find a solution. We did the same thing with Levi, we did the same thing when Cole was out. And now we have to do something different because of Moi.”

It’s clear who his replacement is likely to be – Andrey Santos did well coming in for Caicedo a few weeks ago, and Maresca confirmed today he was ready for a similar job:

“Yeah, Andrey is ready. His position, once again, is playing as a six, like Moi’s position. But he’s ready. We have more options, we have more service, we can have different positions. I think one that can play good in that position is Josh [Acheampong], but we’ll see.”

Now that is an interesting suggestion…

In other news…

Maresca’s press conference also touched on the big news of the week – Cole Palmer’s return and when that might be. We did the calculations here for you.

Malo Gusto also spoke after the Arsenal game and he was super positive about the way his team had played with ten men, especially considering the standard of their superb opposition.