Danny Drinkwater has announced his retirement at the age of 33 and reflected on his struggles at Chelsea that ultimately led to the disappointing end to his career.
The former midfielder was part of Leicester City's famous Premier League title winners in 2015/16 before joining Chelsea in the summer of 2017 for a fee of £35m.
Drinkwater would make 22 appearances across an injury-hit debut season and would play his final 30 minutes in a Chelsea shirt during the 2018/19 Community Shield, before he was frozen out of the first-team picture altogether.
After spending a whole season on the sidelines, Drinkwater joined Burnley on loan in August 2019 but would play just twice before a January switch to Aston Villa, where he would make a further four appearances before returning to parent side Chelsea at the end of the campaign.
Loans with Turkish side Kasimpasa and Championship outfit Reading followed before Drinkwater was ultimately released from his Chelsea contract in 2022, and he would search for a new club for the next 12 months before ultimately announcing his retirement on The High Performance Podcast.
"As a whole it was obviously garbage but if you break it down I had some unbelievable times there," he reflected on his time at Chelsea. "Not unbelievable, but really good.
"The first season was a bit tricky. I picked up a few niggly injuries - it's just part of football, really. I was on it. I was dying to get going. It was never the fee that bothered me, that was separate. It was more 'I need to prove myself now. I've ticked a box by getting back to a top four [club] and now I need to stay there and prove to myself, not anyone else, it's myself now'.
"At the end of that season with Chelsea, I had this one moment that disappointed massively. I can't say too much but hopefully in the future it's going to get solved. That summer, after that, I was like 'I need to go, this just isn't for me, it's not really worked from the get-go and then this has happened, so I could do with going, this isn't going to get any better'.
"I remember in that first season, I bought a big house to move all my family down and have a good go of it, but I was ready to just forget about that and go where I needed to get just so my career would not go the way it's gone. I was trying to leave that first window."
Pressed on the incident, Drinkwater declined to give any further details but confessed: "It was to do with the club, yeah.
"What I can't say happened before I wanted to go. It was me then thinking 'this is just not for me'. Now, in the summer, I'm trying to leave and my agent's saying 'they're not letting you go, they're getting a new manager in, stick around'. I'm like 'what the f**k?'."
Drinkwater went on to spend 12 months on the sidelines under new manager Maurizio Sarri after refusing Chelsea's efforts to send him overseas.
"At the start I did [try talk to Chelsea]," he said. "It was Sarri, who is a great guy by the way. We got along top, it was so strange. I just don't think we saw eye to eye, but I don't even think it was from him, looking back now.
"I was given an hour to find an English club. We had the meeting, he pulled me into his office an hour before the window closes. We're talking, and he goes 'l think you're going to get frustrated with your playing time this season'. They'd just signed Jorginho, which is fair. But I'd been a part of his pre-season plans.
"'I've got an hour, what's going on?' [They said] 'There's loads of Italian clubs'. 'I've just had a kid, I ain't going f**king anywhere'. So I just walked out. It was a difficult one. First of all, it was a surprise, and secondly, it's going way against what I wanted. My priority is my kid. This is all changed now. I'm sticking in. This is me. I'm settling here.
"There was talk of Cesc [Fabregas] going but then he stayed, Jorginho came in, so I knew it'd be hard work. I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but I did not want to become part of that loan market that Chelsea's got. It just wasn't in my plans when I joined."
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This article was originally published on 90min as Danny Drinkwater explains what went wrong at Chelsea after announcing retirement.