There are perhaps few people as well placed to appreciate the level of change that took place at Chelsea during the 1990s as Jody Morris.

As a teenager taking his first steps in senior football, he had a front-row seat to the new methods being imported at our Harlington training ground. But as a newcomer at that level, Morris was a clean slate and able to take in the benefits without the hindrance of having to overwrite old habits.

The Londoner came through the ranks in our youth system to make his debut as a 17-year-old; he came off the bench in a 5-0 Premier League win over Middlesbrough in February 1996.

Looking back all these years later, there is no doubt in the mind of Morris that the modern, forward-thinking Chelsea was instigated by the manager who handed him that first-team debut.

‘Glenn Hoddle gave me my debut and it was Glenn who, two years before that when he first came in, started making big changes at the club – around nutrition, how to live your life, bringing things he’d learned when he spent his time playing in France,’ explains Morris.

‘He started the ball rolling, making big shifts in the culture of Chelsea. Especially at the training ground, which was the most important thing, because the way people were living at that time was a little bit different compared to what you expect nowadays.

‘It was a bit of a shift but when you’re signing players of the ilk of Mark Hughes, Ruud Gullit and players like that, who have been abroad and know what it’s like in a culture that was more suited to athletes, the message hits home a little bit better.

‘It was an adaptable time for quite a few of us, especially me, being young. It was about taking onboard new methods and new ideas. Things like masseurs, nutritionists, reflexologists, the training periods were different too. We were at least five years ahead of what the rest of the Premier League started doing.’

Both players and supporters are now used to the highly professional methods employed in the game. No stone is left unturned in the pursuit of performance and it can be hard to imagine how new and strange many of the ideas introduced by Hoddle seemed.

For Morris, it was the focus on player nutrition that best demonstrates how much things changed, as things that are now considered a given at the top level of any sport were brought in.

‘When I was in the youth team, us young players were given a voucher we could use in a kebab shop at Fulham Broadway that Chelsea had a deal with. It was good we didn’t have to buy food, but it was a kebab shop!

‘Going from that to where things were even 18 months later showed the amount that went into it. Before then we never used to eat after training or have any food available at the training ground, let alone proper food.

‘But because I was young I would just do what I was told, before and after it changed. I was just happy that we could eat at the training ground rather than having to go back to Fulham after training in Harlington to cash in my voucher at the kebab shop!’

As the modernisation of Chelsea took hold under Hoddle, it wasn’t just the manager who set the tone for change. For Morris, the example set by many of the foreign starts who arrived – and even their mere presence – demanded a step up in standards.

‘It really hit home when we had all those foreign superstars coming over. Some of the lads would do what they needed to do at the training ground and then go and eat a burger and chips at the pub. That’s how it was.

'But when you saw those superstars coming over and how they lived their life, it was only natural we would follow.

‘When you’re talking about Ruud Gullit, Gianluca Vialli, Gianfranco Zola, they’re global names. You couldn’t help but look at what they were doing and try to emulate them.

‘When you saw Franco, the player with the most technical ability in the whole group, out there late after training, spending time on the technical side of his game, you haven’t got any excuse for not doing the same.’

For a teenager like Morris, there were positives and negatives to those high standards. Much like Hoddle in his playing days, Jody was arguably more suited to a continental style of football, and the wealth of experience on the training pitch benefited the young midfielder’s development.

However, the inevitable consequence of the arrival of new and talented teammates was increased competition for places and reduced opportunities for young players.

Morris admits it could be frustrating at the time, but he can see both sides as he recalls it now with the benefit of experience gained from a long and varied career in football.

At Chelsea, he made 173 appearances in seven years as a player, rose through the Academy a second time to become head coach of our Under-21s, and was assistant coach to Frank Lampard in the senior team.

Last year he undertook his first spell as a head coach himself with Swindon Town, the same club where Hoddle began his management career.

‘There was no way I would have made my debut so early if it wasn’t for Glenn,’ said Morris. ‘He wanted to play the game that we all look at now, passing out from the back and playing the right way. For someone of my size, it certainly helped me that Glenn wanted to play football.

‘The fact we had foreigners coming in, it was hard for me at times, because I was thinking I won’t be able to get a game if we keep signing all these players. But on the flip side, I was learning from some of the best players in the world.

‘Other players might be playing a lot more regularly than me at other clubs, but they’re not getting the same education with the level of player I was playing with. It was a bit of a flip-of-the-coin situation, but I appreciated the fact I was playing with top-level players.

‘I’m only human, though, and I did have an element of resentment, purely from a natural perspective, when I was looking at players playing regularly at other clubs I knew I was better than. I wasn’t playing as much as I thought my talent deserved as a homegrown player.

‘Would I have played more games if the foreign players hadn’t come in? Absolutely, a bundle more, and maybe things would have turned out differently.

'But the fact is I was lucky to play under someone like Glenn who gave me my debut so early, in a continental style. I can’t have it both ways – that's just the way of the world.

‘I’ve got great memories of working with unbelievable foreign players and I learned a lot from them. Not just on the pitch but off the pitch, too. None more so than Vialli, who I was lucky enough to be a roommate with. I was truly lucky to be around those players.’

For all the talent that arrived at Stamford Bridge to play alongside Morris under Hoddle and his successors in the dugout, Gullit, Vialli and Claudio Ranieri, Jody believes it was the character and attitude throughout the squad that was the secret of their success.

The cultural melting pot that the team became combined the best of both worlds, English and continental football, into something new and exciting.

The best example of that was perhaps Eidur Gudjohnsen. The Icelandic forward joined Chelsea in 2000 and such was the ease with which he embraced English football and its culture that he was soon referred to by his teammates as being in the “English boys” group.

‘It was a funny one with Eidur. He used to call himself an Englishman, because he’d been here so long at Bolton first, and the Scandinavian way is a little bit easier to adapt to the English lifestyle.

‘I remember there was a period in the dressing room when me, Eidur, JT and Lamps were thick as thieves – and you wouldn’t have thought seeing us that Eidur had come from a different country,’ remembers Morris with a laugh.

‘But I think the reason Chelsea were successful was that we all meshed well. The foreign guys took on board some of the things that were important for the British culture or the English league, but the English guys took on board the good things the foreign players brought as well.

‘I think that’s why we had such close dressing rooms. It didn’t matter where you were from, if you were a good character and a good personality, you could get on with everyone.

‘Obviously, the language could be a barrier unless you’re willing to make the effort, but many of the foreign lads did and that's one of the reasons why they became so successful.

'That’s a testament to both sides of the story, the foreigners and the English players. We all tried to help each other and learn from each other, and that’s why Chelsea became so successful.’

And successful they were, with Morris part of the Blues side which lifted the FA Cup, Community Shield, European Cup Winners' Cup, and UEFA Super Cup, all in a style that had not been seen on these shores before but would soon be repeated by many across the English game.