Paul Clement relishes being back at Chelsea six years after the boot

Paul Clement allowed himself a moment to linger on Chelsea’s double-winning side. The names up and down an imposing spine tripped off his tongue and memories of the cricket scores they ran up over the campaign’s final weeks prompted a smile, before thoughts sped forward a year to the parting of the ways. The end had come at Goodison Park within an hour of a defeat to Everton on the season’s final afternoon with the manager, Carlo Ancelotti, dismissed in a poky corridor outside the away changing room.

His assistant would have to wait a little while longer to learn his own fate. “I’d gone to have a drink with David Moyes in his office, so Carlo only told me on the bus on the way back to the airport that he’d been sacked by Ron [Gourlay, the chief executive] just by the dressing rooms,” Clement says. “He’d been half expecting it given what had happened leading in to that game. Maybe he didn’t expect it to happen right at that moment, mind, but there you go. Anyway, word gradually got around the bus and by the time we got back to Cobham everyone knew, so we all went up to town – Frank Lampard, John Terry, Ashley Cole, all the senior players – and had a really good night out.”

Approaching six years on and Clement can talk fondly of that last night as a Chelsea employee, citing it as evidence of the bond Ancelotti always forges with his players. Yet, as he prepares for a first return to Stamford Bridge as a manager in his own right on Saturday, and in the week Claudio Ranieri lost his job at the current champions, he would also acknowledge his wildly fluctuating fortunes at the turn of the decade served as an education.

Swansea City are a team revived under his stewardship, with four wins from six league games. He is claiming that first victory at Crystal Palace, when Alan Curtis was still in caretaker charge but the new man felt compelled to join him on the touchline. He has hoisted them from bottom on his appointment to four points clear of the teams in the relegation zone. The 45-year-old was the manager of the month for January but Swansea are still not safe. There is still work to be done. This is no time for distractions.

The task in hand is blunting the runaway leaders. There will be louder fanfares afforded to former Chelsea figures on returns to the Bridge this season. José Mourinho has already received one – and an accompanying thrashing – and will be granted a second in the FA Cup quarter-final on 13 March. Claude Makelele, Swansea’s assistant manager, will be greeted as a hero when he takes his place on the visitors’ bench. Yet Clement deserves his own rousing welcome back.

He became part of the furniture at the club over his two spells there, the first spanning five years as a part-time coach in the centre of excellence while he spent his days teaching PE at Glenthorne school, around the corner from Sutton United’s Gander Green Lane. Then, after seven seasons at Fulham, he spent four more years as a member of the youth, reserve and, under Guus Hiddink and Ancelotti, first-team staff.

He witnessed Chelsea grow in that time, from their days at Harlington under Ken Bates, to the lavish spending of Roman Abramovich’s ownership and the development of a plush home at Cobham. “They made me realise I might be able to coach full-time but I always imagined it would be as a youth coach. I never thought it would be at senior level. But, with the emergence of academies in 1998, there were more opportunities for people to work at clubs. Not just former players, but people from education backgrounds. “We’d work with the under-14s and under-16s at Harlington at the weekends, and midweek at Battersea Park, hiring an old artificial pitch. While we were training, the hockey players would be warming up and getting changed. It was rock hard, like concrete. I used to keep the balls in the back of the car and pump them up myself. There was no kit. I can still remember Carlton Cole jumping off the train and then tearing round to the pitch on his BMX, usually late but always with a big smile on his face.”

It was Hiddink, whom Clement had met at Fulham when his Australia national team occasionally trained at Motspur Park, who offered him a first role with the seniors during a successful interim stewardship in 2009, and Ancelotti who retained him. By then the young pretender had soaked up information from Jean Tigana and Luiz Felipe Scolari, Glenn Hoddle and, from afar, Mourinho. “While I was still at Fulham I’d ask my friends [at Chelsea] to draw me the exercises he was using so I could see ‘What does he do here? What does he do there?’ I was intrigued by it all so, going back, it was fantastic to witness first-hand.

“I knew I had some skills but going from the relatively safe development environment of the academy to the first-team was big. I was very nervous about that transition. There’s a road between the academy and first-team buildings at Chelsea’s training centre, and crossing it felt like moving up from primary to secondary school. But the players were very respectful. That team was very mature: Cech, Terry, Ballack, the Coles, Lampard, Essien, Drogba … strong characters, right at their peak.”

There was marginally less depth to that squad a year later, when Ancelotti struggled to rouse them from the infamous “bad moment” mid-season which brought 10 points from 11 games and, despite a late spurt of wins, effectively cost the Italian his job. Yet Clement followed his mentor to Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid and, after gaining his first taste of senior management at Derby County last season, to Bayern Munich until the new year.

His appointment at the Liberty Stadium came at the third time of asking after interviews in 2012 and earlier this season. The early impression is of a fine fit: a manager who shares the playing philosophy that established Swansea in the top flight and a squad receptive to his coaching style.

Around 200 supporters attended a fans’ forum at the Liberty Stadium on Wednesday evening and the reception was wholly positive. Belief is restored.

He returns to Chelsea a changed man, eager for reunions with Terry and David Luiz, but more worldly wise. The locals might even see him as a threat, given his impact and the fortnight he has had to fine-tune a tactical game plan. Yet his affection for the club who gave him his chance remains intact. “This is a much younger Chelsea team than when I was involved, and that’s not good news for a lot of other clubs,” he said. “If they can keep that group together then they could be title contenders for the next three to four years. We’re all excited, not daunted, by the challenge of taking them on.

“I’ve done a lot in the last six years, working in three different countries, learning different languages, learning different football cultures. I suppose I have evolved over time and, for sure, I am better than I was six years ago. Better than I was one year ago. I always have that belief that you cannot stand still. What I did six years ago would not be good enough now. You have to change with the times.”

Clement has done just that. Swansea, up to now, have been the beneficiaries.