The Chelsea hero was in advanced negotiations with the Nerazzurri to reunite with his former boss Jose Mourinho, but pulled the plug at the last minute.

The death of his mother, Pat, was a devastating blow and that changed his world view entirely.

“That was why, at one time in the summer, I was looking to move. I just couldn’t accept the idea of playing at Chelsea without looking up and seeing Mum in the stand,” he told the Daily Mail.

“Even now it is a huge gap in my life and very hard to handle. There were a lot of things that we used to do together, go to Harrods for tea, go to a certain restaurant, so suddenly there were shops I couldn’t walk into, all sorts of things from which I needed to get away.

“I thought: ‘I can’t live like this; I’ve got to leave London.’ That wasn’t the answer, though. No disrespect to Inter Milan, they are a great club and everybody knows what I think of Mourinho, but if I had gone it would have been for the wrong reasons. It would have been because of Mum.

“You learn a lot about people in those times. Jose Mourinho texting me every day; Avram Grant was so clever and kind; people who were not in my life suddenly appeared, and in a good way.

“Fans, too, from places like Liverpool and West Ham, who generally don’t like me, writing letters. That really touched me.”