I like to play every game and I would like to play this game

I like to play every game and I would like to play this game now because I have been injured [for England on 1 March] and I have only started to get my sharpness back. I was starting to feel at my peak again so to miss out is even more disappointing.”At 25, Bridge has spent so much of the past year out that missing a single game hurts. The injury sustained against Newcastle was desperate: a broken fibula bone beneath the knee in his left leg, ripped knee ligament, a break to his ankle and some dislocation. The surgeon told him that he would have to wait a few days for the swelling to calm before he could operate – and his prognosis was bad Bridge smiles at the memory of the surgeon’s next line. “He said I might struggle to return to football but on the positive side he said he thought he was a really good surgeon and he could get me back.”Even Bridge is prepared to admit that “the first couple of days were quite dark” but after the operation there were a steady stream of visitors to the hospital.

Not just his parents and girlfriend, his team-mates came with the Carling Cup, the back-room staff visited and Mourinho, too. When he was well enough to return home, Chelsea’s owner, Roman Abramovich, even came round to check on his progress.Before he sustained the injury, Mourinho had told him that he was in the team to play Barcelona in the first leg of last season’s Champions’ League tie, and the irony is that had he not gone on loan to Fulham in January he may well have played this season’s second leg at the Nou Camp. But life at Chelsea changes very quickly, even for an England international, and by mid-January Bridge had played just twice, in the FA Cup and Carling Cup, all season. A virus prevented him making a Premiership return over new year and by the time he was fit again his chances seemed to have vanished.”The first half of the season I was having a lot of problems with my ankle and my foot so it was difficult for the gaffer to play me but even when I started to feel good towards December and January it didn’t look like I was going to play,” Bridge says.

“I went to see him [Mourinho] a few times and he wouldn’t let me go He said he wanted me here. Eventually, I told him how I felt and he was willing to let me go – which was very good of him.”I went to speak to him and I felt I needed to get it off my chest that I wanted to play every week. I said I needed to do it for myself because I found it so hard training every day and not getting to play I needed to do it to get my fitness back. He’s always said to me, ‘It’s for a loan spell and we want you back in the summer for next season’.