On his Chelsea debut on Feb 4, 1996, the teenage Jody Morris walked the mile to the game at Stamford Bridge from his childhood home on the Cheesemans Terrace estate in west Kensington, and even now he retains two distinctions from that day. He is still the club’s youngest-ever player, a debutant at 17 years and 43 days, and the last true west Londoner to come through the academy.

The team-mates who were later to eclipse him in their professional careers were both east London boys, John Terry, from Dagenham, who had originally been at West Ham, and Frank Lampard, a privately-educated Essex kid who signed from the same club years later. Morris came from the old west London heartlands that had supported Chelsea before they had been associated with a more well-heeled demographic. While it might sound a simple point, it is right to say he loves Chelsea now as much as he did as a teenager watching the team from the stands.

The story of the assistant to Frank Lampard is another key part of Chelsea’s reinvention this season as a young, homegrown-inspired team revelling in the enforced transfer window zero-spend. As teenagers, Lampard and Morris knew each other well before the former signed for Chelsea in 2001, having played together for England Under-21s. Another 1978-born contemporary, Rio Ferdinand, once described Morris as the best schoolboy footballer of his generation in London.