Chelsea’s Maresca excited to face old club Leicester but James injured

Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca is excited to tackle his former club Leicester City, who he guided into the Premier League last season, but the London side will be without their captain Reece James who has been sidelined with injury yet again.Maresca joined Leicester in June last year following the club’s relegation to the second-tier in the 2022-23 season and helped the Foxes bounce back to the top flight as they were crowned champions in the 44-year-old’s first term in charge."I’m excited and thankful, it was a fantastic season. The owner, his family are fantastic people. They care for players, staff, all of the people that work in the club. You can see that,” Maresca told reporters ahead of tomorrow’s game. "It was a fantastic season because I met good people. There was a fantastic connection between the players and staff, and that is something you have to create to be successful. I’m still in contact with them.”Maresca said captain James, who has made only four appearances this season after struggling with a hamstring injury, is unavailable after suffering a setback this week. "He felt something, he has to be out. For sure, this weekend and then we’ll see. We don’t know for how long. He has to try and avoid as much as he can but sometimes things happen even if you want to avoid that,” Maresca said. "Hopefully he can be available for the next one but he is not available for this one. It’s a muscular problem. We don’t want to take any risks for this weekend. Hopefully, it’s not something long.”Chelsea are third in the standings with 19 points from 11 games and will face a Leicester side languishing in 15th place but Maresca said they cannot take Steve Cooper’s side for granted. "They know exactly what we do ... We will try to adjust the small details to see if we can do something different. It’s more from their side that they know us better than we know them,” Maresca said."It’s not an easy game. We can see it is always complicated, no matter where the teams are in the table. We are going to make sure we are focused and prepared. We will prepare to win in the best way.”Southampton suffer Ramsdale, Bednarek blowPremier League basement dwellers Southampton have been dealt a double injury blow ahead of Sunday’s home clash against Premier League leaders Liverpool with keeper Aaron Ramsdale and central defender Jan Bednarek both ruled out. Bednarek, who has been ever-present in the league this season, was injured while playing for Poland against Portugal last week while Ramsdale has had finger surgery.Both are expected to be out for several weeks, according to Southampton manager Russell Martin. "They’ll both be out for this weekend and a number of weeks,” he told Southampton’s website. "Aaron has had an operation on his finger, he’ll hopefully be back this side of Christmas. Jan, we spoke really quickly after the game. He was really worried about his knee injury. Thankfully the injury is not as significant as we fear, hopefully a week or two before Aaron.”It is hardly the news Martin needed with the visit of a flying Liverpool side who are five points clear at the top. "They’ve been two of our best players all season. Of course it will affect the team and how it looks but others need to step in and take their opportunity,” he said.Southampton are bottom with four points from 11 games. "We should be excited for the challenge and I think teams have shown in the last few weeks that you can pick up big results against big teams, good opposition, and we are going to have to,” Martin said of the challenge of facing Liverpool. "Our level of performance against teams at the top end of the table has been good on the whole.”