Tomori says he was told to work harder to get back in the squad but was never given a chance.
The centre-back decided to go on loan in the summer but Chelsea rejected any moves until deadline day, reveals the 23-year-old.
Tomori feels he’ll always be grateful for Lampard despite the difficult decisions the coach made.
Tomori insists he’s now fully focused on doing well at AC Milan before assessing his options in the summer.
“I was suddenly out of the squad and I don’t really know why,” Fikayo Tomori told The Telegraph.
“I just thought I needed to work hard. Then I went to speak to the manager and he said you’ve just got to train harder, so I took that on the chin and thought that’s what I had to do.
“I was thinking that after the way the previous six months had gone, the best thing for me to do was to go on loan and get some games and come back to Chelsea with a full season in the Premier League behind me. I was ready to go and I wasn’t allowed to because the manager said I was in his plans.
“Then, a few hours before the deadline, I got a call saying the manager had said I could go to West Ham and it was a shock because this hadn’t been in the conversation at all.
“My plan had been that if Everton didn’t happen, I had to be prepared to stay at Chelsea. By the time the West Ham offer came, it was too late to just switch that mentality with no time to think about it.
“I will always be grateful for the opportunities he gave me. Maybe because of our history he thought I would accept it, but from my perspective, with that history, it felt more personal and harder to understand.
“I don’t know what happened, it wasn’t really explained to me. Soon after joining Milan, the manager sent me a positive message.
“It was an unusual situation – I wasn’t at Chelsea anymore and he wasn’t the manager. With all he had going on, it was a nice thing to take the time to do.
“That was a challenging time mentally, but carrying it with me isn’t going to be good for me. I made a promise to myself that now I’m in Milan, the next months or until whenever, I’ve got to be focused on what I’m doing here.”
After starting 14 of Chelsea’s first 19 league games last season, Tomori made only 6 appearances in all competitions for the Blues during the calendar year 2020.
The young centre-back moved on a loan deal to AC Milan in January and has impressed since then.
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