Chelsea football club are looking at candidates to replace Pochettino. Leicester City boss tops the list.

London: Chelsea are in talks with current Leicester City boss Enzo Maresca to replace Mauricio Pochettino, who The Blues sacked last week. Several names have been doing the rounds for the past few days, but according to reports, Maresca is tipped to be the top candidate to replace the Argentine as the management has requested official permission to speak to the manager.

According to senior Italian journalist Fabrizio Romano, Maresca and Chelsea have had positive talks with the Premier League giants need to pay a sum of close 10 million pounds in compensation to land the Italian at Stamford Bridge.

Roberto De Zerbi, who is set to leave Brighton at the end of the season and Brentford manager Thomas Frank were also the names that seemed to be potential candidates to manage The Blues in the next season. Earlier, Maresca served as assistant to Pep Guardiola at Manchester City.

He impressed the Chelsea bosses with his obsession with positional and possessional play and is set to become the latest from Guardiola’s coaching staff to manage a club from the perceived ‘Big Six’ after Mikel Arteta and Vincent Kompany, who will soon take over managerial role at Bayern Munich.

Chelsea are looking for a progressive coach to work with an inexperienced side, with which Pochettino enjoyed a great form at the business end of the season. Pochettino took over the reigns from Frank Lampard at the start of the season with expectations of taking Chelsea back to where they were earlier during the ownership of Roman Abramovich.