While the Mourinho era delivered his third Premier League and Chelsea’s fifth league championship in their history, the collapse of their title defence this season has demonstrated to the club that lessons have not been learned. There was no core identity upon which they could fall back upon, which was demonstrated by Mourinho’s own struggles to arrest the slide.

The hope is that Conte will build a team that can take charge of games rather than the current fundamentally defensive outlook which relies on the creativity of a few individuals – Hazard, Willian, Diego Costa – to win matches. The perfect example of that kind of progress is regarded as Wednesday night’s opposition, PSG, who have steadily developed an identity over the last three seasons and have eliminated Chelsea from the Champions League in the last two.