Abdul Baba Rahman is refusing to give up on his dream of becoming a Chelsea regular despite not playing for them for over two years.

Chelsea signed the left back from Augsberg for £21.7m in August 2015, but he struggled to make an impact at Stamford Bridge.

Baba Rahman started just 19 games for the Blues before joining Bundesliga club Schalke on loan in 2016 only to suffer a serious knee injury which kept him out of the game for 12 months.

The Ghana international agreed another loan deal with Schalke in January to take him through to the end of this season, but 24-year-old is confident his Chelsea career isn’t over.

He said: “You can never say where football will guide you to. Maybe I stay for the next 10 years at Schalke but I can also imagine playing for Chelsea again.

“As one of the best clubs in the world, Chelsea gives many players the chance to make their dreams come true and become better footballers.

“The club gives talented players a chance to prove themselves. At Schalke, I am now regularly in front of 60,000 spectators on the pitch, which makes me incredibly good in my development.”

Meanwhile, defender Antonio Rudiger insists the best is still to come from Chelsea even though they have won their first five League games to sit top of the Premier League.

Coach Maurizio Sarri was appointed in mid-July – after pre-season training had got under way with former coach Antonio Conte still at the helm.

Sarri has revolutionised Chelsea’s style of play by switching from the 3-4-3 formation employed by Conte, who was sacked, to a 4-3-3.

And Rudiger said: “There is always room for improvement. The coach has only been here for a few months so we will improve, definitely.

“The squad is strong enough to win the title, but it depends all on us because last season we dropped a lot of points against the smaller teams. We have to focus on every match.

“We cannot look ahead too far because we have just played a few matches. We have to go step by step and just try to win the next game.

“I can speak for the others, everyone is happy (with Sarri). I like him as a coach. I knew him before from Italy, but I only played against him (for Roma).

“His last team Napoli always played good football. He is a funny guy off the pitch but on it he is serious about his work. That is good.”