Manchester City's £54 million midfielder Kevin De Bruyne has claimed that Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho only spoke to him twice while he was at Stamford Bridge.
De Bruyne, 24, returned to English football by signing for City this summer from Wolfsburg after a failed spell at Chelsea.
However, despite Mourinho's insistence that De Bruyne would not fight for his place, the Belgian maintains that his relationship with his then-coach was poor.
"I didn't get any explanation," De Bruyne told the Daily Telegraph. "I only talked with him twice, Mourinho.
"That was before the Champions League game against Basel, where he said I was doing better, in his opinion and that I would get my chance. I think that was maybe November.
"And then one week before January, that's the day I said I wanted to go out because even if I was training better, I was not getting any minutes. So for me personally, it was better to go."
De Bruyne was named as Bundesliga Player of the Year last season for his performances at Wolfsburg and believes he is now a totally different player to the one who left Chelsea to join Werder Bremen on loan in 2013.
"You can't compare with me two years ago at Chelsea," he said. "It's a different situation and I am a completely different person than I was then.
"I was 19 when I signed and then worked with three managers and just didn't play that much. I had come from Werder Bremen, where I played every second, so the difference was huge. I wasn't even on the bench."
His Chelsea experience may not have been great, but De Bruyne believes it turned out to be the making of him.
"I was probably a bit eager to play all the time at Chelsea and maybe should have taken it a little bit more slowly," he added. "But I don't regret it (leaving). I just wanted to go at that time, either a sale or loan.
"I just needed to go so that things could be better for me personally. Selling was probably better than loaning because, if you go on loan, you just return to the same situation.
"I would still have been a young player coming back from a small club to a big club and I would have had to prove myself all over again. "That's okay if you are 17 or 18, but I had always had four or five years of football behind me so it was different."