Romeo Lavia was forced to come off in the opening minutes of Chelsea's clash against Qarabag at the Tofik Bakhramov Stadium on Wednesday night. The 21-year-old midfielder, who appeared to have suffered a muscle problem, was replaced by Moises Caicedo.

Enzo Maresca had been in the process of slowly reintegrating Lavia, having missed the start of the season due to injury. Speaking to reporters at Cobham on Tuesday ahead of a long-haul trip to Baku, Azerbaijan, the Blues boss provided an update on his fitness.

"The main target for Romeo now is to be fit," said Maresca. "Don't get any injuries. For me, at this moment, Romeo is where Reece was more or less one year ago in terms of back after a long time. We need to manage him every minute, every day, every second.

"And the target with him is just to keep him fit. So, he's training with us. He's OK. He's 100% fit. But we need to be very careful with him because we don't want him to be out again and finally he can enjoy being a football player."

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