Fernando Torres admitted to being unhappy in the first year or so at Chelsea, adding he did not even care if his side won or lost.
"Halfway through last season, I distanced myself from the values I had grown up with," he told the Spanish newspaper El Pais. "I had teammates who didn't care if the team won or lost because they were not playing.
"I never wanted to be like that - (but) one day I discovered that I was like them, that it didn't matter if we won or lost if I was not playing.
"I wasn't part of the group. I discovered that I was not happy because I had stopped being what I had always wanted to be. In the dressing room, you can never lose that group concept.
"But I learned to look at myself and to realise that the only person that can change is you. The only person who can say -- 'You're making mistakes, you've got to do something' -- is you.
Torres felt the change of guard from Andre Villas-Boas to Roberto Di Matteo helped him finally settle at Stamford Bridge.
"When we changed coach it was a bit more similar (to former Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez's style)," he said. "That had a good side to it, which was that I learned -- I became a better player.
"I can now do things that I was not able to before. You can be the player that your coach wants, but you're not the player that people expect you to be. I spoke to Steve Holland, the assistant (coach), a lot and we worked hard on it.
"I became more mature, I came to know myself better and became conscious of the fact that it depends on me. I learnt to be more self-critical, to understand everyone better and to accept the situation.
"I learnt that if we won it didn't matter that I hadn't played. I had to keep working.
"When I retire the only thing that concerns me is that no one can say that I was a bad teammate or disrespectful or self-important."
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