Everton assistant manager Joe Edwards has described how a training session involving Didier Drogba sparked his relationship with Frank Lampard.
The former Derby County and Chelsea boss was appointed as the Blues manager at the end of January, stepping in to replace Rafael Benitez who had been sacked a few weeks previously.
Lampard didn't come alone to Finch Farm and brought with him new managers of his immediate backroom team - with Edwards as assistant manager, Paul Clement as first-team coach and Chris Jones as first-team coach and head of performance.
The assistant boss and the Blues manager go way back - and Edwards has described how he first met Lampard when he was a player at Chelsea.
He told Everton TV : "When Frank was a player, something had happened where the first team travelled somewhere and a few players stayed back.
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"Frank, Didier Drogba...a couple of others. For some reason, I was the one left covering the group - I don't know if one of the academy coaches was away sick or something.
"But yeah I took a session that Frank was in, and I was told afterwards that Frank enjoyed the session and the intensity. Then we obviously would see each other around the training ground.
"When Frank then retired, we kept in touch, and then he came back and did some of his early coaching at the academy and that continued the relationship.
"When Frank was the Derby manager we had talks about me potentially joining his team at Derby at some point, but then in the summer we were speaking about that he ended up getting the Chelsea job!
"When he was named the manager at Chelsea he moved me from being the under-23 coach into his coaching team.
"At that time, me being at my club to work with the first team alongside probably the greatest player the club's ever had, it was an amazing opportunity."
Edwards admitted that it could have been a difficult decision for him to leave Chelsea having spent so long there as a coach.
However, he was delighted to get the call from Lampard, and the pull of being able to work at a club like Everton was also a huge factor in his decision.
"I was excited to get the call from Frank, it was a difficult decision for me.
"Chelsea is a club I've spent most of my life at. I was in a position there were I was happy, and being part of a big club that are competing for a lot competitions...it's not an easy decision to make to walk away from that.
"But having worked with Frank before, knowing what that's like and knowing how that tests me and develops me personally, to get the opportunity to work with Frank again was massive.
"But, added to that, the fact that it was a club the size of Everton was obviously just a decision that became a fairly easy one to make.
"It could have been a hard one and it was still difficult to leave somewhere that felt like home to me. But this is an incredible opportunity I felt I had to take."
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