Chelsea have made an offer for Barcelona duo Ronald Araujo and Jules Kounde ahead of the January transfer window, according to reports.
The Blues have made a positive start to the Premier League season with their 3-0 win over Aston Villa pushing them up to third in the table after 13 matches.
Chelsea are level on points with second-placed Arsenal but still nine points adrift of Premier League leaders Liverpool heading into the busy festive period.
Despite making 11 signings in the summer transfer window, the Chelsea board are still hoping to improve their team again in January following their promising start under Maresca.
And reports in Spain claim that Chelsea are ‘trying to reach an agreement’ with Barcelona over the transfers of defensive duo Kounde and Araujo.
It is claimed that the Premier League side have made an ‘offer’ of €125m (£104m) for the Barcelona duo but the Catalan giants aren’t too keen to lose both players.
Chelsea ‘need a specialist’ at right-back and Kounde is seen as ‘a great candidate’ while ‘phenomenon’ Araujo ‘would bring solidity and strength to the defensive line’ at Stamford Bridge.
But Barcelona president Joan Laporta and sporting director Deco ‘only seem to be considering selling the centre-back [Araujo], and the intention is to retain’ Kounde.
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Chelsea boss Maresca is preparing for the “worst game of the season” for the Blues when they face Southampton at St Mary’s Stadium on Wednesday.
Maresca told a pre-match press conference: “This is the worst game for us since we started the season. The toughest game and we need to be ready, otherwise it will be a bad day for us.
“If you analyse the results, they are there [at the bottom of the table] but in terms of performances they are very good. They were leading against Liverpool, only lost 1-0 to Manchester City and they drew in the last game against Brighton.
“I was in the Championship with Southampton last season and I know how good they are. They are very brave, they want to keep the ball and for sure this will be a very difficult game for us and we need to be ready.”
With a trip to Tottenham to come over the weekend on Sunday, Maresca was asked if he would consider rotating his players at Southampton, he responded: “I don’t know yet. We had a session yesterday where the players who played on Sunday were in recovery and the rest of the guys trained as normal.
“This afternoon we will have another session and then we will decide [on who starts] after then.”
Wesley Fofana has been an ever present for Chelsea this season but was forced off against Aston Villa with a hamstring injury.
When asked about Fofana, Maresca said: “We don’t have any update at the moment because it happened two days ago. We need to wait a little bit and hopefully we can get some news in the next days. For sure he will be out for the next weeks.”
On Reece James, Maresca added: “It’s the same situation more or less. He is getting better but it’s still weeks to come back.”
When asked if Benoit Badiashile would replace Fofana at Southampton, Maresca replied: “It depends a little bit on the game plan.
“Benoit could be one of the solutions but we have Tosin and Axel, different players who can play there. For sure, it’s a big loss because Wes was doing fantastic in every game, but we need to accept and find different solutions.”
