The Blues travel up to the LNER Stadium as we enter the Carabao Cup at the third-round stage, looking to start the new week with victory at Lincoln after falling to a narrow 2-1 defeat at Manchester United in the Premier League over the weekend.

Our head coach was asked during his pre-match press conference about the current condition of some of the players involved at Old Trafford, including Cole Palmer, with our No. 10 substituted after 20 minutes in Manchester.

'Cole is probably the only one that we need to assess a little bit,' Maresca explained. 'The rest are okay, just recovering from last week.

'He already made a huge effort last Saturday to try and play the game. He tried Saturday morning, he was not 100 per cent, but he wanted to be there to help his team-mates in that kind of game. It was painful [for him], so we decided to change. We await day by day to see how he is and then decide what we do.

'Cole is one, and then we have some players who have had problems for a long time like Moises Caicedo and Joao Pedro. They are trying to manage it a little bit themselves, but then the rest are okay.'

Meanwhile, Enzo explained that the Blues duo of Benoit Badiashile and Romeo Lavia won't be available for the trip to face the Imps, but that they are making positive progress at Cobham.

'[Benoit and Romeo] will not be back for this game, unfortunately,' he continued. 'They both took part in the session yesterday, which is good news, and hopefully they can be available soon.'

Maresca also revealed that it's likely that some of our Academy players could be in the matchday squad, but our head coach expects everyone to be at their best as we look to progress in the competition.

'You can sleep very easy in these kind of games,' Maresca said of the upcoming fixture. 'Football is full of these games. I am very worried about that, but for sure, we will have some players from the academy, like we have always done.'