French players in the 30 years of the Premier League era have only been outnumbered by their English counterparts – and the Blues have played a big part in that. Since Frank Leboeuf joined us in the summer of 1996, there has rarely been a time that Chelsea have been without French representation.

Thomas Tuchel already had one of France’s finest in his ranks this season before the Fofana signing, and that has been the case, almost continuously, for a string of Blues managers going back more than a quarter of a century, ever since a charismatic centre-half signed for us from Strasbourg in 1996.

Frank Leboeuf was more than just a great player for the club, he was a huge factor in the transformation of Chelsea and, many would argue, English football in the Nineties, as he brought a level of technical flair which had rarely been seen in central defenders on these shores.

For all of the fuss about his suspect temperament and his perceived arrogance – did you know he won the World Cup? – he never conceded a goal in a cup final appearance for the Blues and, what’s more, he could be found here, there and everywhere on the pitch thanks to his fondness for a sprint up field followed by a long-range blockbuster strike. He also took a mean penalty, boasting an almost flawless record from the spot.

• New signing's first day

• What we need to climb

• Check out our Watch section

Beefy, whose post-football career has seen him become a successful actor in his homeland and an outspoken pundit, was also a trendsetter for his fellow countrymen.

A year later, Bernard Lambourde joined us, and while the versatile defender may not have been as big a success as Leboeuf, he did famously score a winner against Tottenham.

Then there is Laurent Charvet, the last man to wear the No.26 shirt for Chelsea before John Terry made it famous. The right-sided defender was only at the club for six months in 1998, but in that time he won two trophies.

Two-time Champions League winner Marcel Desailly joined the Blues shortly before going on to lift the 1998 World Cup with France on home soil – and it was not long before Chelsea fans found out just why he was known as The Rock.

He was at his imposing best in our run to the 2000 FA Cup and during our maiden voyage in Europe’s premier club competition. He was also the the natural successor to Dennis Wise as skipper.

For three years Desailly and Leboeuf were together at the heart of our defence, during which time we also had France’s World Cup-winning skipper Didier Deschamps on the books for a season, as an experienced head for our aforementioned Champions League debut.

Desailly kept up Chelsea’s French connection until 2004, when his six-year association with the club came to an end. There were others to take on the baton, although Emmanuel Petit was not one of them as he too departed Stamford Bridge that summer after three years in which he tried gallantly to live up the form he had shown in his Arsenal days.

Still, we had William Gallas and Claude Makelele in our ranks. The former had joined us in 2001 from Marseille as a virtual unknown on these shores, although he had scored the winner in a Champions League game against Manchester United; by the time he left in 2006, he had established himself as a two-time Premier League winner and a World Cup finalist with France.

Maka, meanwhile, was so good he had a position named after him! ‘The Makelele role’ became a common term for a defensive-midfielder in the Premier League, but no one seemed to do it quite as well as him. He was a vital cog in the make-up of two title-winning sides, someone who made the game that much easier for his team-mates.

We are now up to 2008, when the diminutive midfielder left us for PSG, and although the man who had been signed as the new Makelele, Lassana Diarra, had already departed the Bridge after becoming impatient at a lack of opportunities, we remained well stocked in terms French players.

Florent Malouda signed in 2007 after being chosen as the best player in Ligue 1 and he became a key player in our free-flowing Double-winning side of 2009/10. Few wingers can match his goal tally for the Blues and he even ended up as our top Premier League scorer in 2010/11, before going on to play his last game for the club on the night we were crowned Champions League winners for the first time.

Although Nicolas Anelka just missed out on that famous game in Munich after leaving us a few months earlier, he certainly left his mark at Chelsea over the previous four years. Like Malouda, he was wonderful when we won the Double, which was his second in English football, and prior to that he became only the third Chelsea player to win the Premier League Golden Boot.

Here is where the chain is broken, however. While Malouda remained at the club until 2013 – albeit not involved with the first-team squad, thus ending the run of French contributors to our many trophy triumphs as we won the Europa League – it was not until Kurt Zouma arrived in 2014 that the Blues restocked our Les Bleus quota.

The big centre-back was soon joined by Loic Remy, a centre-forward who had starred up the road with QPR as well as at Newcastle United, and the two of them were understated parts of our Premier League title-winning squad in 2014/15.

The same, of course, could not be said about N’Golo Kante after he joined us from Leicester in 2016, for there was nothing understated about his performances as we reclaimed our top-flight crown from his former club. He was the dominant midfield player in the country and an obvious choice for numerous individual prizes that term.

Kante has been a mainstay of the team since then, winning the Europa League and, most famously, the Champions League. No one was more important than NG on that run to glory in Porto, as he was named Man of the Match in virtually every knockout match that season!

Another French midfielder, Tiemoue Bakayoko, was not able to have the same sort of impact after joining in 2017, spending the majority of time since then on loan, but Olivier Giroud came in a year later and made a happy knack of scoring vital goals in our two successful European runs, including one in the Europa League final against his old club Arsenal. He also had a habit of scoring spectacular goals, such as his slalom special in an FA Cup semi-final win over Southampton and a breathtaking bicycle-kick against Atletico Madrid.

Malang Sarr debuted for the Blues last season and he came on as a substitute in our Club World Cup final triumph, continuing the trend of French players winning silverware with Chelsea – although he will now spend the season on loan with Monaco.