Maresca shuts down attacking midfielder swap talk ahead of friendly rivalry game | OneFootball

Chelsea’s current run of games didn’t look too scary back in the Autumn, but a lot of these games are turning our harder than we anticipated.

There’s no better example than Aston Villa, who started the season unable to score a goal, let alone win a game. However a crazy recent run has seen them stack together ten wins in a row and shoot up the table to three points ahead of us.

It’s not an ideal time to face them, let’s be honest. Enzo Maresca spoke a little about their threat in the press conference today.

Maresca hails “fantastic” Villa after historic run

Morgan Rogers playing in the Champions League. (Photo by Dan Istitene/Getty Images)

“Yeah, they are doing fantastic. They are doing fantastic this season, last season, years ago with Unai [Emery],” Maresca said.

“They are doing a fantastic job. As you said, at this moment they have won 10 games in a row. Hopefully we can win the game on Saturday.”

What makes this clash particularly interesting now is that Cole Palmer and Morgan Rogers, great mates for many years, are the two talismans of the respective sides. While Palmer has missed most of this season injured, Rogers has been in superb form. Maresca was cheekily asked asked whether he would trade his star for Villa’s.

“No,” he replied. “Because I love Cole, and Cole is my player.”

In other news…

Maresca also had news on the injury front, with two attackers ready to return after short absences. That gives us some crucial depth at this busy time, and increases our options for Saturdays’ game.

Chelsea are not expected to have major business in January, but they will likely sell Tyrique George, who is a pure profit asset sitting on the books they looked to move on in the summer too. Sky Sports took a look at the deal in quotes we have here.