Reece James suffers fresh injury blow ahead of Leicester vs Chelsea

Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca has revealed Reece James will miss the Premier League clash with Leicester City at the weekend.

The Blues face the Foxes in the Saturday lunchtime kick-off, with Maresca returning to King Power Stadium for the first team since he left to join Chelsea as Mauricio Pochettino's successor. It's been a good start for the Italian so far in west London, with Chelsea currently third in the Premier League.

Ahead of Saturday's clash, Maresca confirmed during his pre-match press conference on Thursday that James has picked up a hamstring injury. Maresca said: "We have just one injured player, that is Reece. He felt something and we don't want to take any risks for the weekend. He is the only one that is not available for this weekend.

"The rest, some of them are better, some of them are still a doubt and we need to wait. Today is the first session we do with all the players [returning] from international. So we will see after today's session."

He added: "[It's his] hamstring. It's a muscular problem. We don't want to take any risks for this weekend and hopefully it's not something long."

It's a huge blow for James, who was one of the players pictured training with the rest of the Chelsea squad earlier this week. The Blues captain has only featured four times this campaign, playing 241 minutes of action in the Premier League.

Maresca confirmed that James picked up the injury on Tuesday, with the Chelsea boss currently not sure how long the 24-year-old will be sidelined for. "No, as I said, he felt something. He has to be out, for sure this weekend and then we’ll see. At the moment we don’t know how long. Then we’ll see," Maresca said.

Asked how his captain is mentally, Maresca added: "I know it’s not easy, but if every time he is getting an injury it becomes hard for him, for me it’s even worse. He has to accept that. He has to try to avoid it as much as he can.

"But sometimes things happen even if you want to avoid them. This weekend he’s not available. Now we start to play every three days so it’s probably difficult he could be available for the Conference but hopefully he can be available soon."

James has already missed a large part of the season with a hamstring injury and it remains to be seen if he will return to the Blues squad for their next Premier League fixture against Aston Villa on Sunday, December 1.

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