Delap spent the 2023/24 campaign on loan at Hull, scoring eight goals in 32 games for Rosenior’s Tigers, who finished in seventh position in the Championship. That figure would have been higher were it not for a knee injury Delap suffered midway through the season.

Rosenior has kept a keen eye on Delap in the seasons since, as he has done with many of the players he has worked with at Derby County, Hull and Strasbourg. Now they have joined forces once more.

‘It was so good to see Liam perform at a level that I really believed he was capable of in the Premier League,’ said Rosenior of Delap’s time at Ipswich Town last term.

‘So it did not surprise me at all to see him come to this club and move up a level again. And the great thing for Liam with his age, with his potential, with what I know he's capable of, is that it's exciting because he's got so much more to come.

‘In terms of working with him at Hull, I'm not surprised at the level he's got to in a short space of time. But he also knows that with me, I'm going to keep pushing him to keep improving. If he can do that, and I'm very confident he can, he's going to have an outstanding career.’

Rosenior also spoke in detail about Enzo Fernandez at his press conference to preview the visit of Pafos. He revealed the midfielder played through illness during Saturday’s win over Brentford, which made his standout performance – voted Player of the Match by Blues fans on the Chelsea Official App – even more impressive.

‘He's been outstanding in the time I've worked with him,’ said Rosenior.

‘He's even surprised me, in a good way, in terms of what he did on Saturday when he was ill. I know it was his birthday, but to be ill and cover the ground that he did, the way that he's trained and the way that he's performed, he's very, very important to me.

‘I think we're going to have a really, really good, hopefully, winning relationship moving forward in the short term and in the long term.’

Fernandez will soon celebrate the third anniversary of his arrival at Chelsea. Since then, the World Cup winner has been deployed in several different positions on the pitch, and Rosenior was asked which he thinks best suits Fernandez.

As our head coach explained, the breadth of the Argentine’s talents means there is no need to shoehorn him into one role. That is a stance he holds for his whole squad.

‘He's got an extreme skill set. Firstly, technically, he's outstanding. He also covers a lot of ground; he's a very, very good athlete. He can score goals. He arrives really well in the box when he plays higher up as a forward running eight or a number ten in the pocket – he really does arrive well in the box. And a player of his level can do many different things.

‘What I need to do, not just with Enzo, with all of the players, is find out what the chemistry is around his position. It's not just him; it's how other players work around him.

‘But, for me, Enzo can play deeper as a six, which he did really well against Arsenal. I brought him on against Charlton as a pocket player and he did really well. That doesn't surprise me because he's an outstanding player.

Rosenior added: ‘I don't like to pigeonhole players. I don't say that they can play just one position.

'If you look at my career, what I've done with players, I've used them in different roles because of the way teams play against us and the strengths and weaknesses of each game. I'll do that with Enzo because he's an outstanding player.’