Fikayo Tomori and Tammy Abraham have been good friends and teammates for 14 years and the 21-year-old defender believes their relationship is strengthened by their shared heritage and commuting to Chelsea's Cobham training ground  as teenagers.

The pair started training together in the Chelsea Under-8s and at 14 both turned down the opportunity to join the Academy's full-time school programme.

Remaining in conventional education, the Londoners frequently travelled to Chelsea's Surrey based training base from the city.

  • "It definetly made our bond stronger"

"I’ve been at Chelsea since I was seven," Tomori explained via the Chelsea website.

"And the one person that always comes up in every single journey has been Tammy because we’ve been together since we were seven years old.

"Our parents are both Nigerian, we both grew up in south-east London and we used to come in on the same days.

"We would take the train into training together, talking about what’s going to happen when we go full-time.

"I think it definitely made our bond stronger and took our relationship to something different."

  • In safe hands

Both Tomori and Abraham have enjoyed prosperous debut seasons in the Chelsea first team. 

The two academy graduates, both 21, have 40 Premier League appearances between them this term and the latter is the Blues' top scorer.

Tomori opened his account for Chelsea away at Wolves in September, a game that saw Abraham bag a hat-trick and fellow academy graduate Mason Mount also get in on the act.

The trio who have grown together for so many years as part of Chelsea's youth set-up are enjoying the reward for their hard work and proving the quality that the set-up can produce.