Chelsea defender Andreas Christensen has spoken of first graduating from the club's academy.
Regularly invited to train with the senior squad when he was just 16 having excelled in our Academy, the Danish defender was then named on the bench for our final fixture of the epic 2012/13 campaign, against Everton.
That was a month after his 17th birthday. A few months after his 18th, in October 2014, he made his Chelsea debut. Shrewsbury Town were our League Cup fourth round opponents and Christensen was deployed by Jose Mourinho at right-back.
"It's hard for a young player to come over the road from the Academy," he told chelseafc.com.
"At the time, you are so nervous. You want to show what qualities you've got and make sure they can see a future for you.
"I just remember taking it all in, every session, not only from the manager but the players that were here. I came the season after we won the Champions League in 2012. All the players that were there had experienced different things, so I just tried to take everything in.
"I was quite lucky we had a few of us training a lot with the first team: Nathan Ake, Lewis Baker, Ruben, me. That made the transition a little bit easier. At the same time, you are young, so you don't really think about the consequences too much when you're that young. You know you won't play a Premier League game straightaway, so you're just enjoying training and taking it all in."
It was on the final day of our victorious 2014/15 title-winning campaign that Christensen did make his league bow for the Blues, as a substitute against Sunderland.
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