Before my mother died, she told me not to leave Chelsea.

I'm really happy here. I think anyone who knows me well, and the fans too I hope, they know that I love the area, and the bond that I've had with the fans has been fantastic.

I'm not silly. I understand that, with age and at different parts of your career, you have different challenges.

When I came to Chelsea from West Ham there were certain parts of my game I felt I needed to improve and I like to think now that I have shown dramatic improvement.

I don't know if we'd have been as dominant as we were last season. The new things, the new ideas the manager brought in everyone took them on board so well. He is special.

I have a lot of good football talk with cabbies, but when you want to get somewhere in a hurry, it can be distracting. I always know they're going to want to talk football if 'Talksport' is on the radio.

Having grown up watching Barcelona, Elen gets a bit annoyed watching me if I don't do flicks and tricks like Ronaldinho. I have to explain you can't do that all the time in a game!