Danny Drinkwater has offered rare insight into the disorienting reality of life outside Chelsea’s plans, detailing training away from the senior group after his £35m move from Leicester City. The 36-year-old spoke to The Athletic’s David Ornstein about a season where competitive football was almost entirely absent.
Drinkwater, who moved to Chelsea in 2017, featured 22 times under Antonio Conte but only played for 30 minutes in the Community Shield under Maurizio Sarri in 2018/19. By April 2019, he had not appeared in a competitive match for 13 months.
Drinkwater explained that four of every five weekly sessions were spent working independently alongside five or six teammates, most of them development squad players.
He was frozen out of the first team, and that isolation took a psychological toll. Looking back on that, Drinkwater said:
“I’d just been bought for 35 mil or whatever the deal that was a year before, and then I’m training with development squad players. That alone is an absolute… You know, you’re going to burn yourself up in your head. So I guess you just try and look for ways to clear it, and that was the London lifestyle, yeah.”
His transfer to Chelsea never blossomed into the long-awaited reunion with N’Golo Kante, his former Leicester midfield partner. Drinkwater made 23 Chelsea appearances in total, with only 12 in the Premier League.
Exit and Retirement of Danny Drinkwater at Chelsea
Drinkwater left Chelsea in June 2022 when his five-year deal expired, having spent the 2021/22 campaign on loan at Reading. He made 33 appearances as the Royals finished 21st in the Championship, four points clear of the relegation places.
In an Instagram message to supporters, he apologised for the way things had played out and said he would have loved fans to see him at his best in the shirt. The sentiment captured a wistfulness that has seeped through his post-Chelsea reflections.
He announced his retirement on 30 October 2023 on The High Performance Podcast, admitting that he’d been in limbo for too long. Drinkwater is a 2016 Premier League winner with Leicester City and a three-time England international.