Patrick Bamford

It is a slightly surreal story and one that 20-year-old Patrick Bamford tells with a smile as he explains how he found out via One Direction’s Niall Horan that José Mourinho not only knew all about him but had been sending text messages to the singer every time the Chelsea striker scored for Derby County.

Already out on loan at MK Dons when Mourinho returned to Stamford Bridge last summer, Bamford never had chance to speak to the Chelsea manager until he was invited for a meeting a couple of months ago, when the possibility of being the Premier League club’s third-choice striker next season was discussed.

It was a few weeks before that when Bamford learned that Mourinho was following his progress on loan at Derby much closer than he could have imagined, albeit it through an unlikely source. “Niall from One Direction is a big Derby fan, he came down to the club and I was talking to him,” Bamford says.

“Niall said: ‘Mourinho knows all about you, he texts me all the time.’ I said: ‘No he doesn’t.’ He showed me his phone, and because he was doing his treatment at Chelsea, for his knee injury, he knew all the Chelsea boys and Mourinho. And he had texts from Mourinho whenever I scored, saying ‘Bamford again!’ That made me smile. That was the first time I knew that Mourinho knew about me.”

“Because I was doing well at Derby and I’d done well at Milton Keynes, it was a discussion about that and the planning for next year. They were hinting at a new contract but I don’t know yet what’s happening there.”

“The first thing he (Mourinho) said to me was: ‘What do you want to do next season?’ As quick as I could I said: ‘Play for Chelsea.’ He said: ‘That’s good, at least you know what you want. We’ll see.’”

“From what they’ve said, ideally I’ll be third striker, but you never know really in football. Hopefully I get a good pre-season, especially with the World Cup, because a lot of the big players are going to be away, so it’s going to give some of us youngsters the chance to get some game time to try and show him what we can do.”

Shed wrote:Also, I still haven't given you your av and sig #betyouthoughtiforgot

fatman123 wrote:In the interest of fairness its probably better you have taken so long, i havent been on much lately because ive been getting smashed.........by uni work