The Blues legend made a return to his former side in 2019 in only his second managerial appointment but he admitted he wouldn’t have got the job if it weren’t for the club being blocked from signing new players for two transfer windows after being found guilty by FIFA of breaching rules about signing minors.

He told FourFourTwo magazine: “The stars aligned with Chelsea.

“People had opinions, of course, but the opportunity was there, they had the transfer ban and everything. I wouldn’t have got the job without that, I knew that, but I went there, worked with the younger players, and we made it into the Champions League and got to an FA Cup final as well.”

Frank – who left Chelsea in 2021 but returned for a brief stint as caretaker boss in 2023 and is now Coventry manager – began his coaching career at Derby County and he’s baffled as to why people felt he should have started with youth teams or in the lower leagues.

He said: “People sometimes say to me, ‘Oh, you should have gone to manage the youth team or managed down at the bottom.’

“But I’m like, ‘Why?’ I had a really long playing career where I learned a lot.

“Of course, you have to retrain as a manager and the job has much more responsibility in loads of ways, but I’d played for a long time and I wanted to take that opportunity with Derby.

“We made it to the play-off final and were so close to getting to the Premier League.

“I learned a lot of things during that first year in terms of management – managing staff, managing what the job entails.

“That was a great experience and unfortunate in the end. Then the Chelsea job came along.”