Southampton boss Russell Martin has praised the job Enzo Maresca is doing at Chelsea and admitted the pair are facing different challenges to what they experienced last season.

Last campaign, Maresca led Leicester to Championship glory before taking the reins at Stamford Bridge in the summer, while Martin's Saints secured their top-flight spot by beating Leeds in the play-off final at Wembley. Despite losing both league encounters to Leicester last term, Martin believes those experiences might offer insights into Maresca's tactics, though he now has a different squad quality to work with.

“Last year, they played us early on and it was probably a good time to play us at our place. Then it was probably a really bad time to play them at their place,” Martin recalled. “We had taken a really difficult result at the weekend (losing at Cardiff) and they were in such a good place, very close to winning the league.

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“We would have learned a bit, they would have learned a bit about us for sure – but also I think his challenge is different now, he has very different players. Our challenge is different now, so the context of the game is different. Of course there will be stuff that we learned from it and he did, but I think it is very different.”

Martin told a press conference: “We do things a bit differently this year than we did last year and he does the same because he has a different group of players. It is going to be an exciting game and one we can definitely try and impose ourselves on, but they will be thinking exactly the same.”

The Saints boss believes Maresca is doing a fine job at Stamford Bridge, with the Blues beating Aston Villa 3-0 last time out. “Enzo’s done a great job. I have got a lot of respect for him and what he did at Leicester last season,” Martin said.

“Sometimes the hardest thing for a coach to do is to take another team and make it his own and look very similar in such quick time, which he has done. He has a really talented group of players, but he has managed to get them to buy into his way of doing things his way of working and his way of playing.”

Martin added: “That has been the toughest challenge at that club over the last couple of years, to get them to really buy into one thing. Enzo seems to have done with players who were bought for different things, so it is big credit to him.”