“There’s an interview with Frank Lampard on Chelsea TV,” he says, “I remember because it was around my birthday (in October) and he’s speaking highly about precisely this, the high line, the pressing; ‘Now we play open football’ et cetera and how great the ideas of the new manager are and all these things.
“My problem at Chelsea was that we were never regular” — by which he means consistent — “with results. We never found stability or belief in the system. Everything exploded on that run. It was always up and down, up and down, up and down in terms of results and in belief and disbelief in terms of the philosophy, the old Chelsea and the established players, so that buzz started to pick up.