Former Chelsea and England defender Graeme Le Saux has opened up about the harsh realities of life at Stamford Bridge during his playing days.

The 56-year-old — who was on the books at Chelsea from 1987 to 1993, and then again between 1997 and 2003 — claims the dressing-room culture was hostile, cliquey and often cruel, especially towards those who didn’t conform.

Le Saux also claimed that the club showed ‘no duty of care’ to its younger players.

‘Stepping into Harlington [Chelsea’s then training ground] there was no duty of care. It was all about banter in the worst possible way. They talked about “resilience” which was an excuse to abuse people. They said: “Oh, we are toughening you up.”‘

Le Saux, who won the Premier League with Blackburn Rovers in 1995 and earned 36 England caps during his career, said much of the bullying stemmed from relatively innocuous personal differences — such as reading The Guardian or going interrailing with a male friend one summer.

Former left back Graeme Le Saux played more than 300 games for Chelsea over two spells at Stamford Bridge between the late 1980s and the early 2000s

He earned 36 England caps and played alongside David Beckham (left) at the 1998 World Cup

Le Saux pictured (second left) with team-mates Gianfranco Zola (left), Mario Stanic (second right) and Frank Lampard (right) during an FA Cup match against Norwich in 2002

He recalled how team-mate Andy Townsend, who was at Chelsea between 1990 and 1993, once picked up his newspaper and joked: ‘There was no sport in it,’ prompting more ridicule. ‘I knew Andy was bright and clever,’ Le Saux said. ‘And was a very important person in the dressing room. I suppose I felt more disappointed because he was better than that, and he has proven that wasn’t him then, but it was who he was in the dressing room.’

Le Saux — who is married and has two children — was often the subject of homophobic jibes during his career, despite being heterosexual. He says the abuse spread from the field to the terraces, and left him playing with fear in his early years.

‘If I hadn’t been through what I went through as a youngster and my mum dying I may not have been able to survive,’ he said. His mother Daphne passed away from cancer when he was just 13, while he was away at a youth tournament in France. ‘I was stupefied with grief,’ he recalled.

‘To an extent, football was a hostile environment. The hooliganism, the abuse that was coming from the terraces. It was much more visceral back then. You could understand the logic and people didn’t challenge it. I fought it and, luckily for me, I came through the other side but at a cost. I definitely played with fear when I was young. I found it much harder to really enjoy the game.’

The abuse reached a peak in 1999 when Liverpool’s Robbie Fowler made crude gestures toward Le Saux during a Premier League match — an incident that sparked a wave of homophobic chanting. Fowler later offered a form of apology in a 2014 interview, which Le Saux has accepted.

‘It’s fine because that’s all you ever want,’ he said. ‘I have been the wrong side of stuff. I have always owned my mistakes and accepted that. I so nearly hurt Danny Mills in a horrendous challenge. There were a lot of reasons why that was the result but, at that point, it was a bad challenge. I wrote to him and said that, no matter what we think of each other, that was out of order.

‘He was respectful of the fact that I said I shouldn’t have done that. Still didn’t stop us going at each other next game – but that’s fine as well.’

Despite the painful moments, Le Saux takes pride in having stayed true to himself.

‘I am proud that I maintained who I was throughout,’ he said. ‘I had built up enough identity growing up that I managed to have that resilience to stand up for who I was. I wasn’t trying to build an image. Being true to myself was fundamental.’

Le Saux pictured earlier this month at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in west London

In 2001, Le Saux made an awful two-footed challenge on Danny Mills – before later apologising

Le Saux spent most of his career at Chelsea but also had spells at Blackburn and Southampton 

A photo taken outside of Stamford Bridge in 2000, during Le Saux’s second spell with Chelsea

He also recalls more positive memories from his second spell at Chelsea, including being named man of the match in his final appearance — a 2-1 win over Liverpool in May 2003 that secured Champions League qualification and arguably helped pave the way for Roman Abramovich’s takeover that summer.

Now an NBC pundit and co-founder of the AI football analytics company Machine Football, Le Saux is focused on the game’s future — but believes today’s culture would have suited him far better.

‘There is much more of an acceptance now in football of the individual,’ he said. ‘The nature of football now is to learn and develop. Overall, the culture of the game would have been better for me. It would have made me a better player.’