Our interview is drawing to a close. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall has spent 15 very enjoyable minutes going down memory lane, recalling a trip to the top with its fair share of bumps in the road. Throughout it all, one piece of advice has been at the forefront of his mind.

‘Always believe in yourself,’ Kiernan states. ‘If you don’t, nobody else will.’

It is that self-belief that has got him to where he is today.

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Kiernan’s story starts in Shepshed, a small town near Loughborough. His parents gave him great support, first introducing him to football and then facilitating his growing obsession with the sport.

‘One of my earliest memories is getting home from school, looking in my back garden and there being a big inflatable goal my mum had bought and set up before I got home,’ he says with a smile.

‘I must have been about five. I just remember seeing that and being the most excited little kid in the world. From then on, I’d just spend hours and hours in the garden with about 20 footballs, just shooting into the inflatable goal, a massive yellow one. I just had such a love for it and can remember how excited it made me feel.’

Every day Kiernan would go to Glenmore Park, near his home, and play football for hours on end with childhood school friends, several of whom remain his best pals to this day.

He lived five minutes from school - first New Croft and then Shepshed High School - and felt part of a close-knit community. He still loves returning to Shepshed now to see friends and family.

‘My surroundings and where I grew up was humbling,’ he explains.

‘It wasn’t flashy but it was a good, honest upbringing. That has made me the person I am today. My mum always used to say to me the one thing you can control is your manners and the way you treat people and respect people. That’s always stuck with me.

‘No matter which way I go in life, I will always be that same person. My mum will never let me forget that! It’s the way I’m wired. That’s the main thing that moulded me. It’s why I like going back to my roots. It keeps me home centred, no matter where I am.’

Shepshed Dynamo were Kiernan’s first club, aged six. He spent just a year there before he started training with Leicester City, Nottingham Forest and Derby County. When the time came, aged eight, he chose Leicester.

His time at grassroots level with his local Shepshed club was short but most certainly sweet.

‘I remember that first year feeling so much joy and happiness going to play on a Sunday morning with my friends,’ says Kiernan. 'We had a little tournament in Skegness and at six or seven years old, that was the best thing in the world. Those memories stick with me now.

‘At Shepshed Dynamo I played with the year above. I was a striker back then. In the first year, I scored like 40 goals. That was the point I realised I probably had something a bit different from the other lads.

‘When I signed for Leicester, it was still a feeling of joy and happiness, but it’s a little bit more serious. It’s a good mix.’

In his early years at Leicester, Kiernan trained two or three times a week and played at the weekend. He credits his parents and stepfather for shuttling him back and forth for the hour-long return journey.

As he entered his teenage years, Kiernan and his childhood friends would head to the astroturf or lush grass pitches at nearby Loughborough University, making the most of the outstanding facilities there when the students had finished doing so.

Academically, meanwhile, Kiernan excelled, registering impressive GCSE results.

‘I did enjoy school – and I enjoyed learning. To this day I’m thinking about what I can do to learn. I don’t like sitting and doing nothing, and I was like that at school.

'I was always on the go and wanted to do something, whether it be football or learning. I sometimes think I would like to go back and experience another week of school.’

On the pitch, though, things were less easy. Kiernan was standing out, but not for the right reasons.

‘Growing up, I was always the smallest kid,’ he reveals. ‘I was a late developer. There was a period of my academy life - let’s say 12 to 16 - where I was underdeveloped. Everybody was changing and I just wasn’t. I was the smallest lad in the age group by a mile.

‘I had some dark moments at home with my mum, asking why this was happening. “Is there something wrong with me? Do I need to go and see somebody?” It was upsetting.

‘Multiple times she had to sit me down and say, “Look, I know it’s the hardest thing in the world right now, but you have to be patient. It’s going to happen, and it’s hard for you to imagine it now".

‘As a kid, it was. When you see all your friends growing up, and you’re not, you’re vulnerable. She would say, “Please trust me” and in the end, it did change. They were my most challenging years.’

Kiernan was able to turn his lack of physicality into a positive because it forced him to improve the technical side of his game. He had to think quicker to compensate for the fact he was being outmuscled and outrun. ‘If I didn’t, I would be forgotten about,’ he reflects.

He was 17 when the growth spurt came. His mum had been proven right. They still laugh about it now.

With his physicality now matching his technical ability, Kiernan was offered a professional contract by Leicester when he turned 18.

‘What an amazing feeling, the best moment of my life up to that point,’ he says.

‘When I signed my scholarship [at 16], I was underdeveloped so I’m not sure it was fully convincing. It was almost rewarding to go through that journey, evolve, and get a pro contract and tell people, “I deserve that, thank you for giving me a chance, now I can repay it”.’

Kiernan did just that at Leicester, forcing his way into the first team after successful loan spells at Blackpool and Luton. He racked up more than 100 appearances for his boyhood club before following Enzo Maresca to Chelsea last summer, following a season where they won the Championship title and the midfielder was named the club’s Supporters' Player of the Season, Players' Player of the Season, and was named in the Championship Team of the Year.

One of the benefits of Kiernan's success is that it has allowed him to give back to the local community which made him the man he is today. Kiernan is an ambassador of a charity called Glebe House Project, where his mum has been working for 35 years and supports adults and children with special needs.

Now, Kiernan calls London home. ‘It’s like going from a small pond to a big ocean,’ he laughs as he compares Shepshed with the big smoke. As he continues to look to grow his influence in Blue, it is clear his inner determination will give him the best possible chance of doing so.

‘I am a player that has a huge amount of self-belief, and I think that is because of my journey and what I have had to face,’ he concludes.

‘I have had nothing come easy to me. In the academy, some lads get fast-tracked, some lads don’t. I was never that lad. I never got extra bonuses. I had to work for every single thing I got and that moulded me into the person I am today. It makes me so determined and motivated to keep improving.’