Oriol Romeu is a happy man again. It's a feeling that he hasn’t experienced for some eight months now. In December, during a Premier League game against Sunderland, he broke the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. This injury meant that he missed out on Chelsea's trip to Japan for the Club World Cup, just when he was proving to be a key member of Rafa Benítez's team.

Three weeks ago he travelled to London to start training in an attempt to get into shape before starting his work with Chelsea, under the orders of Jose Mourinho. But he already knew that he would find things tricky with the Blues: "Mourinho told me that both Michael (Essien) and Frank (Lampard) were ahead of me, and that I would need to share my playing time with them. He insisted that after an injury and at the age of 21 it's important to play a lot of games. 'It'll be difficult and it would be better to be with a team that can guarantee you more playing time', he told me".

"I'm grateful to Mourinho for letting me come to Valencia, which is where I wanted to play. When the session came to an end I went to say goodbye and say thanks, because there were teams that were making better offers to Chelsea and they said they understood my position", Romeu explained.