Chelsea's returning wonderkid Josh McEachran on turning down Real Madrid and lack of opportunities at Stamford Bridge

Hindsight. McEachran, as he settles into this interview, knows the questions will come as to whether he wasted his chance, whether he had too much, too soon, signing a £30,000-a-week five-year deal at Chelsea when just 18, whether he failed to kick on and take his opportunity. Whether he simply was not good enough.

“I don't think that's the case at all,” he says. “I think, at 17 or 18, I was good enough to play for Chelsea. I still think I could play for Chelsea. It's just about the opportunity. You need confidence, don't you? Carlo believed in me. I was going onto the pitch knowing the manager was behind me most weeks and I had that confidence.”

But Ancelotti was sacked at the end of that breakthrough season, 2010-11, when McEachran made 17 first-team appearances. The midfielder only went on to make another five for Chelsea in the next four years when the club also had four managers. It meant upheaval; having to prove himself time and again. And going out on loan. A lot. “I was literally going all around,” McEachran says. “I went to Swansea, didn't work out. I then came back to Chelsea, went on pre-season, then I signed for Boro. That was a good season; I played 40 games. Then where did I go?”

The moves came so quick and fast that the midfielder does, indeed, need prompting. Watford, Wigan Athletic…

“That was just a few months each,” he says. “Watford until Christmas and then I finished the season at Wigan with Uwe Rosler. That was the same, really. I was in and out of the team. Of course it is unsettling, that's why I got a bit annoyed at the end, not annoyed but like...I just want to be settled somewhere. I still had a year left on my Chelsea contract but I took a pay-cut to come here and get my football back on track at Brentford.”

That was in 2015. A big call. And one cemented when, yet again, the year before, Chelsea, with Jose Mourinho back in charge, had bought another outstanding full international in his position: this time it was Cesc Fabregas.

“Yeah, so it's like, brilliant,” McEachran says, laughing, having gone on another loan, at Vitesse Arnhem. “I said (to Chelsea) that I don't think I'm Mourinho's type of player. I said I think I'd like to leave to another Championship club and become settled. I met with the owner and manager at Brentford at the time and felt it would suit how I play.”

Did Mourinho say he could go? “Not really,” McEachran says. “I went on pre-season and was told that I could go out on loan (again). So it was obvious that I was not his type of player. I wasn't like a 17-year-old kid then. I was 21 or 22.”

There is no hint of bitterness. McEachran, now 23, just wanted the cycle to stop; to make the break and feel grounded. Nevertheless it was a huge wrench. “For 15 or 16 years, Chelsea was a massive part of my life,” he says. “It was weird knowing you aren't going back. When you go on loan, you know that you're coming back to Chelsea for the next pre-season and everything will be normal. For me, not to go back to Chelsea was strange.”

He had been there since he was eight, plucked from a six-a-side boys tournament in Oxford. Other clubs wanted him but he was, indeed, a Chelsea fan. “They invited me up for training, gave me a tour. They got two first-team players, Jody Morris and John Terry, to see me at the training ground,” McEachran says. “At the time nobody really knew John Terry and Jody Morris was a legend. John Terry was 18 but, looking back, that was such a big thing.

“As I got older John Terry became a leader, captain, put his arm around me and helped me out. When I first went over to train with the first-team as a 15-year-old he was a big help. Training alongside him, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba.”

Terry is “still the last one who has done it” and come through the youth ranks to become an established first-team player at Chelsea. “It’s such a high-level but also the pressure is so high. It’s hard,” McEachran says. “Even, like, the FA Cup, the League Cup. They are expected to win every single time. When they walk over the white line, they are expected to win so it’s a difficult decision for the manager…But everyone at the club wants to see a young English lad breakthrough, they are desperate for it. So I hope sooner rather than later it will happen.”

He sees signs under Antonio Conte. “This season they are doing more,” McEachran says. “Ola Aina has been in and around. He’s not played that much but he’s been on the bench. There’s Nathaniel (Chalobah), Ruben (Loftus-Cheek). So I think they are definitely trying. Their academy system is unbelievable, they win everything – the youth cup, the Champions League, the reserve league.”

Undoubtedly Ancelotti’s sacking knocked him back as did that unsuccessful loan spell at Swansea under Brendan Rodgers. “It left me a bit uncertain. I wasn't really sure,” he says. “Sometimes, I wasn't even on the bench, I was in the stands and stuff. When you're going from contributing for Chelsea in the Premier League and Champions League, to not even being on the bench at Swansea, it was a bit....I'm not going to say much about Brendan because I don't really want to.”

Those loan spells were difficult. “You're not going to walk into one of the best teams in the world,” McEachran says. “You have to earn it. That's what I still want to do. I want to get back to the top. I'm a Brentford player and want to help them get to the Premier League. If I'm playing well and the whole team is playing well, then we have a good chance.”

In the previous round of the FA Cup Brentford knocked out non-league Eastleigh whose manager Martin Allen had made comments questioning why McEachran had not cut it at Chelsea. “Yeah, I saw them,” McEachran, who pays tribute to Brentford manager Dean Smith for the “big impact” he has had on him, says before adding: “Did you see his (Allen’s) comments after the game? He went back on what he had said. He said I was unbelievably good…He had seen me playing.”

And McEachran is used to such comments. “You get praise, you get criticised all the time so it’s just part of the job,” he says. “You have to just take it, really. Like on most weekends - if I have played really well and got man-of-the-match there will still be the odd person saying ‘you’re this, you’re that’.”

McEachran certainly does not lack confidence. “No, I don’t. I still believe in myself,” he says. “When I was 17 I believed I could play at the top-level and I still believe that now and that’s what I want to do. I want to keep playing here (Brentford), keep playing well, get as fit as I can, because the first season didn’t go well as I was out for eight-nine months and broke my foot twice. But now I feel good, I feel fit and just want to keep playing.”

Having been a regular fixture in the England under-age teams since he was 16 through to 21, McEachran also still has international ambitions and recalls the European Under-17 Championships in 2010, which he helped England win. France – with Paul Pogba – were beaten in the semi-finals. Ross Barkley was a team-mate. “I was ahead of those players,” McEachran says. “I’d heard of Pogba but he wasn’t really around the first-team, he was around the Man Utd youth team and reserves. Same as Barkley. He wasn’t around their first-team then so I felt I was ahead of them, definitely, back then.”

Obviously he hopes to start on Saturday. “When the draw came out I could not believe it, with all the teams left,” McEachran says. “It will be good to go back to see old faces and it’s at Stamford Bridge as well. There will be a good atmosphere and I’ve been having tweets every day from people saying ‘I can’t wait to see you back at the Bridge’ and stuff. So that will be nice. I’m looking forward to it.”