When Chelsea made the decision to splash out more than £24million to secure the signing of midfielder Michael Essien back in August 2005 few would have predicted that the Ghanaian would have still been at Stamford Bridge nine years later.
But the central-midfielder, who will go down as one his country's greatest ever players, soon cemented himself as part of the furniture at Stamford Bridge and played under no less than eight different managers during his nine-year stay in West London.
From helping the Blues win nine major honours to spectacular goals against Arsenal, Essien witnessed it all during his time with the club.
However, things could turned out so much differently for the midfielder, who 25 goals during his Blues career, one of which was almost enough to bag the club a place in the 2008/09 UEFA Champions League final.
Essien has revealed that prior to joining Chelsea almost 15 years ago he had the chance to join Liverpool, with the former Ghana ace revealing that he even went to the Reds' Melwood training base for hold talks with then-Reds manager Gerard Houllier.
Opening up on his nearly move to Merseyside, Essien, as quoted by the Daily Mail, said: "I had lot of offers [when I was at Bastia]. I was close to signing for Liverpool when Gerard Houllier was their coach.
“I even went to Melwood to meet the coach. We had a talk and I returned to France but the offers were still coming.
“PSG, Olympique Marseille et al, but I told Bastia I didn't want to move and they also didn't want to sell me at that time because they wanted me to stay for another year which was fine with me because I also didn't want to leave the club.
“So I stayed for another season, that's my third year with the club.
“Lyon joined the three aforementioned clubs to enquire about me but I thought it was too early to move to England.
“That was why I joined Lyon and later moved to Chelsea under Mourinho [in 2005].
“Lyon were my favourite team when I went to France because they were winning everything. I told my agent that if Lyon have come into the picture I'd like to join them.”
After nine years donning the blue of Chelsea, Essien left the club to join AC Milan on a one-and-a-half-year deal in January 2014.
