Patrick Bamford pulls back one of the sliding glass doors on his apartment in west London and the capital’s sprawling skyline, with all those landmarks, stretches out as far as the eye can see. “You can see Stamford Bridge from here,” Bamford says, pointing out Chelsea’s home a mile or so away. “You can actually see Wembley as well from the roof terrace. There’s the London Eye and you can just about make out the Gherkin building. It’s a good view from here.”

The view is better than good but Bamford, coolly understated in every sense, is not the sort to make a fuss. Chelsea’s 21-year-old striker, who is on loan at Crystal Palace, seems to take life in his stride, whether living in a lovely property overlooking the Thames or, as was the case last season, taking his turn to cook at a student house in Newcastle.

He is a fascinating character to interview, not least because he breaks the footballer mould. Bamford plays the violin (to grade seven), piano and guitar, speaks several languages and his bedtime reading at the moment is Flash Boys: Cracking the Money Code – the third instalment of Michael Lewis’s expose of the international money markets.

Eloquent and exceptionally bright (as well as coming across as level-headed and humble), Bamford took his A-levels a year early and turned down a scholarship at Harvard University to join Nottingham Forest. Academic work still interests him and he has been thinking for a while about whether he should enrol on a part-time degree, with one eye on his next career.

“After football, ideally I want to take Gary Lineker’s job, but we’ll see about that,” Bamford says, with a big smile. “I’d love to do that, present Match of the Day. I always joke with Dad about it, saying that’s what I’ll do when I’m done. So whether I can do something that will help me towards that, I don’t know.”

Assuming Bamford is not over-qualified for the role, there is no need for Lineker to look over his shoulder just yet. Bamford’s priority for now is scoring goals and he is desperate to prove, after successful loan spells with MK Dons, Derby County and Middlesbrough, where he won Championship player of the year last season, that he can cut it in the Premier League.

He had plenty of options in the summer, with at least half a dozen top flight clubs interested, as well as an offer from Spain. “I got a phone call from David Moyes, he was interested in me going out to Real Sociedad, and I was quite keen on the idea if I didn’t get the Premier League club that I wanted. Going abroad appealed to me,” Bamford says.

“I also met with a few managers here and I didn’t realise at first that Crystal Palace were interested. But I’d said to Dad that ideally I wanted to stay close to London, because I’m a Chelsea player and although I really enjoyed my time at Middlesbrough, I was getting a little frustrated at always moving around. I felt like I didn’t really live anywhere and I thought I’m going to have to do this every year if I keep going out on loan. That’s when I decided I wanted to get my own place.”

Football, however, was Bamford’s primary concern and Palace seemed a good fit. “I had a meeting with Alan Pardew and he was really keen. He put forward his plans, he was really positive and he put a big emphasis on improving me as a player. He was saying how he’d studied Mourinho a lot, for his own benefit as well, and so he knows how he works and he thinks he can implement things that Mourinho uses with his own game. Which will help me get ready for Chelsea, hopefully – that’s the end game.”

Signed from Forest for £1.5m as an 18-year-old, Bamford has yet to make his Chelsea debut but he recently agreed an improved contract until 2018 and continues to believe that he can break through at Stamford Bridge. “I have to believe, because if I didn’t there would be no point in doing all of this,” he says. “In my head, if I don’t get a shot at Chelsea, personally, I think I will have failed.

“When I decided to move to Chelsea I got a bit of stick at the time, but I didn’t move just because of the money or just because it was a big club. I moved there because I wanted to play for them. If I gave up without ever having a proper shot at it … whether that means doing a season on loan in the Premier League and going back there and trying to fight for a place, or whatever it may be. If I didn’t do that without someone saying: ‘Look, you’re not going to make it at Chelsea’, without them taking the decision out of my hands, then I’d think: ‘I’ve let myself down a bit there’.”

Bamford could have been forgiven for thinking that he might have a sniff of the third striker role at Chelsea when Didier Drogba left in May, only for Radamel Falcao to join six weeks later. “I did think that for a bit,” he says, smiling. “People have said that if anyone is going to get the best out of Falcao, then it probably will be José. But we’ll see. It’s only a year loan [with Falcao], which kind of spins back to me on a positive. If it’s a year loan and I do well, then you never know what can happen.”

At 6ft 3in , Bamford has the right frame to be a No9, and he has proved that he is a natural goalscorer, but he says that he wants to use his physique to better effect. “Last season I worked on becoming a lot more aggressive in my play, but I can still get more aggressive; not in terms of wanting to go out and kill people, I mean aggressive as in holding the player off and he’s not coming through me.”

He smiles when asked about Diego Costa’s style. “I like the way he plays. And I’ll probably get slated for this, but I like the way that Suárez plays as well, even though he’s done things which you can never forgive, like biting people, I don’t agree with things like that. I think Costa would admit himself that sometimes he does go over the edge, but playing on the edge is kind of what makes you a great player.”

An unused substitute in Palace’s 3-1 win at Norwich on the opening day, Bamford knows that he will have to bide his time. He would love to think that he will make his Premier League debut when Arsenal visit Selhurst Park on Sunday, in a match that evokes unhappy memories of Middlesbrough’s chastening FA Cup defeat against Arsène Wenger’s side in February. “I don’t want a game like that again. I was running around like a dog,” Bamford says, with a chuckle. “We didn’t play well but they were really good. I was on the pitch thinking: ‘This isn’t football, this is just chase.’”

It was while on loan at Middlesbrough that Bamford’s culinary skills were put to the test. Several of his old school friends were studying at Newcastle university and he would often visit them and occasionally ended up slaving over a hot stove. “They had a rota in the house in Newcastle for who was going to cook and when I went over they would sometimes say: ‘It’s your turn’. I’m not sure what the food was like but they ate it all, so it can’t have been that bad,” says Bamford, laughing.

He is more of a musician than a cook, although the violin has been gathering dust for a while and the guitar is still at the family home in Newark, in Nottinghamshire. Cajoled by Jonathan Woodgate, Bamford took to the piano earlier in the year and treated the Middlesbrough players to a Prelude by Bach – as you do – yet there seems little chance of an appearance on X-Factor any time soon. “I like singing, but you wouldn’t pay to listen to me,” Bamford says. “When I sang at MK Dons, Karl Robinson [the manager] said I was a great singer, but I don’t know if he’s tone deaf.”

For Bamford, the next 10 months are all about hitting the right notes on the pitch. “In my head I think I know I can play at this level. It’s just a case of waiting for my chance and then getting myself into it as fast as I can. The manager said to me I’ll get my crack at No9, and when I get it, it’s up to me to keep it.”