When Gus Poyet arrived at Chelsea in the summer of 1997, he walked into a dressing room full of players from all over Europe. Ruud Gullit had been bringing in foreign players, and the squad included the likes of Gianfranco Zola, Roberto Di Matteo, Dan Petrescu and Frank Leboeuf. There were so many different nationalities that players were constantly speaking to each other in their own languages. Poyet had only recently arrived from Real Zaragoza, and his English was still limited. But there was one man in that dressing room who was getting increasingly fed up with the situation. Dennis Wise. Wise was the Chelsea captain, and he did not like having groups of players speaking different languages around the training ground. So one Monday morning, he called everybody together at Harlington, and announced: “From now on, when you come through that gate until you leave, you speak English.” There was no discussion about it. “And the way Dennis put it, it was not an opinion.” “It was a rule.” For Poyet, it meant learning the language quickly, but he understood what Wise was trying to do. The players needed to communicate with each other, and the different nationalities had to become one dressing room. “It made us better, dramatically better.” “Closer.” Poyet had another adjustment to make when he arrived in England. The drinking culture. He had never been a particularly big drinker, and what he found at Chelsea was completely different from anything he had been used to in Spain. He suffered a cruciate ligament injury early in his Chelsea career, which kept him out for five months. And during that period, he went on his first night out with the players. “I remember being injured, my first night out.” “They gave me a beer and I’m holding it, I don’t know if I’m going to drink.” “And then they bring me another one and put it in my other hand.” Poyet quickly realised that being part of that Chelsea dressing room meant more than just turning up for training and playing matches. “I adapted.” “I knew you have to give something of yourself and even if I wasn’t a big drinker I needed to be present.” “Part of the team.” So Poyet made sure he never missed a night out. The Christmas parties were particularly difficult. Some of the Chelsea players could start drinking in the afternoon, carry on throughout the evening, and still turn up for training the following day without any problems. Poyet could not understand how they managed it. So when the players arranged to meet at two o’clock in the afternoon for a Christmas night out in London, he came up with a solution. He would not turn up until seven. That way, he could still spend the evening with his teammates without having to keep up with them for the entire day. Because some of the lads could drink amounts that Poyet knew he would never be able to handle. And somehow they would be back training the next morning. “Me, I would be in a coma for seven days.”