Mason Mount and Fikayo Tomori believe their confident starts to their Chelsea first team journeys is down to Frank Lampard.
Both youngsters have stepped into the Blues first team and not looked out of place for a minute.
The duo, who were on loan at Derby with Lampard last season, believe the manager is so crucial to the successful first team integration.
Mount told The Sun: "When I was 14, my dad told me I should leave Chelsea.
"There are so many good players in the academy and a lot of people were saying not many youngsters ever get to make it here.
"That was the discussion we had but I told him thatI'd be the first graduate to make it since John Terry because it was always my goal to play for Chelsea and I didn't want to go anywhere else.
"I loved the competition and I think the fact that Fik and myself both worked for Frank last season gave us a bit of an advantage for coming into pre-season.
"Having an English manager who knows all the young English players coming through the academy has given both of us that confidence to go out and perform."
Tomori said in the interview: "It was difficult to have much personal contact with the previous managers.
"The only time they'd get to have a look at you would be pre-season when there were so many players all coming back from loans.
"But now we have a manager who knows the youth-team players and understands what it takes to be here at Chelsea.
"He's given us the opportunity but it was still down to us to take it.
"We could easily have come back for pre-season and not trained well, instead we've worked hard to get into the team and now we have to keep doing that to keep improving."
