And then, we were led to the even more exciting part of the tour – the home dressing room. It was simply sensational. That’s where our blue warriors move around, I mean that space there, where I was walking around. Frank Lampard must have once stood on that very block of square foot I was standing.

I had seen the dressing room of the title celebration scenes in the season review DVD. It was not as big as I had imagined. At second thought, it need not be too big. It’s just a dressing room. What do you expect to see in the dressing room? The closets and the jerseys on the wall and lots of space to move around, that’s it.

We know that the dressing room is where the players change to the official kits. But I thought they would reach the stadium just in time and get to the dressing room and kick off. That’s because I thought all the tactics session and stuff would be over by that morning session on matchday. It was interesting to know that the players assemble at the dressing room a good 3 to 4 hours before kick off. They get their massages, spas and stuff like that before they charge in to the field.

The dressing room had all the relevant jerseys in the respective cupboards. The furniture made of fine wood contrasted so nicely with the blue jerseys. I told Dave that I almost forgot that Ivanovic existed until I saw the jersey hanging up there. You know why John Terry wanted his No.26? Earlier the cupboards used be in jersey number order. He wanted No.26 so he can sit next to No.25. You’ll remember who was our No.25 when JT got his No.26 jersey. Yup, it was Gianfranco Zola. Terry admired him so much he wanted to be as close to him as possible.

Nowadays, the cupboard arrangements are not as per the jersey number. Unfortunately what I saw was English players grouped together, and similarly the French, Portuguese and so on. Not sure if that was what the players wanted but anyway, it’s just the dressing room. David was conducting this little trivia session on Chelsea players. Don’t be surprised. I seemed to have the answer for every single question.

As an extension of the dressing room was the shower rooms. But there weren’t too many and is that why Mikel gets himself sent off so he can get an early shower? There was also an oval-shaped, about 4 feet long aluminium tub. Dave was checking us if we could figure out what that is. Looking at the horizontal shake of the heads, he joked that it is SWP’s bath tub. I’m sure it must be a regular joke that he ‘cracks’ in every stadium tour session.

Actually, that was the tub where the players’ boots are all scrubbed and cleaned by the volunteers (those kids that pay to do this). So at half time or at full time, you have players who throw their boots into the tub and have these kids ready those boots for them. I’d love to ask those kids, whose boots have the least dirt ;-)

Dave also told us that the home dressing room at Stamford Bridge is lot better than the away dressing room. That’s good. Let the opponents rot in a dungeon. Dave also said that the closets are right up on the wall so that our players need not have to bend down and up to pick up their belongings. Inside the closet was safety locker where all the jewellery and rolex watches go in.

The closets were all air-conditioned with a nice perfume so that when our players go to the press conference, all can feel better. I wanted to ask if there were any stories of players stepping onto the pitch wearing each other’s jerseys by mistake, but we were moving on to the away dressing room.