‘This is just the start. We want to stay for many years and win trophies’

are off it. That’s the best lessons you learn.

‘After those home games you mentioned, I looked at myself and asked whether I created enough chances or took enough shots. We weren’t scoring. Was it my fault? I look at myself and know I needed to do more. I am an attacking midfielder and I need to get in to the box. Stamford Bridge has to be a fortress and it hasn’t been.

‘The gaffer has put his confidence in me to start games so if I am not doing it, I will be hard on myself. My dad is too. Just because I am young it doesn’t matter. You have to step up and perform.’

In a physically demanding and increasingly athletic league, Mount perhaps does not fit the stereotype. He still looks as though he has some filling out to do.

‘The game now is athletically demanding and I am up against [Kurt] Zouma and [Antonio] Rudiger in training, for example,’ he says. ‘But I have been like this throughout my career. I would love to put a bit of strength and weight and muscle on but it’s not as easy as that.

‘I am always in the gym trying to bulk up a bit. But you don’t want to get too big because your speed and movement will get affected. I would love to have Adama Traore’s muscles but I am never gonna get that!’

For Mount it looks like being more than enough. The attitude and natural gifts acknowledged and nurtured in the dressing room at Vitesse Arnhem two and a half years ago have taken him to where some people feared he could not go. It will be a surprise if there is not more to come.

‘Me and Tammy speak a lot and when we walk out on matchday we are still pinching ourselves that we are playing at Stamford Bridge,’ Mount says. ‘It probably hasn’t properly sunk in yet. We just want to carry on, work hard and see what happens and where it takes us in the future.

‘This is just the start, the first season. We want to stay together and build on this. We want to stay for many years and win trophies.’