An issue sustained in the warm-up to our victory over West Ham United ruled Palmer out of our win at the London Stadium. The 23-year-old was also absent as the Blues defeated Fulham before the international break.

Palmer wasn't called up for England duty and has spent the past two weeks undertaking recovery work at Cobham. Yet Maresca says a decision will only be made on Palmer's availability once he has come through a full training session.

The Blues head coach explained: ‘Cole took part in a session yesterday for the first time – but not the entire session. Today in the afternoon, we have one more session, and we are going to try with him and see if he is ok. Otherwise, he will be out tomorrow again.

‘He had an injury, but he has recovered from the injury. So it wasn't about managing him; it was him recovering from the injury. From the moment he is available, we have to think about how to manage him a little bit because of the amount of games [we have coming].'

One player ruled out of our trip to the Gtech Community Stadium is Liam Delap, who suffered a hamstring injury in our win over Fulham.

The 22-year-old striker pulled up while chasing down a pass and had to be replaced in the 14th minute of our 2-0 victory, and Maresca has stated how long he expects Delap to be sidelined for.

He said: ‘Liam is around 10-12 weeks, so a long way to go.’

Maresca also detailed how our Brazilian players have returned following their World Cup qualifier against Bolivia in La Paz, the highest capital city in the world.

The game at the Estadio Municipal El Alto – which was played at an energy-sapping 13,412 feet above sea level – ended in a 1-0 defeat for the Selecao, and Maresca admits playing at altitude makes it harder for players to recover swiftly.

He said: ‘The three Brazilian players arrived yesterday but didn’t train; they did a recovery session. Moises Caicedo [who was away with Colombia] arrived last night. I didn’t see him, but I will see him today.

'So, for all of them, it’s a question mark for tomorrow, but when they play in Bolivia, it’s so difficult to be back [at full fitness] very soon.’