Meet the people powering Premier League stars over gruelling festive schedule

What it means to be a professional footballer has changed massively over the years.

Former players have made that abundantly clear through tell-all autobiographies, after-dinner speeches, newspaper columns and punditry roles.

We hear about how the rampant drinking culture, the lax rules around life away from the training pitch and about the extra-curricular activities that ensued because of them.

All of that is now firmly in the rear-view mirror. With top-level football completely enthralled by the "one percenters", there is no room left for the rowdy nights in the pub around the corner from the training ground or piles of junk food after matches.

Paul Gascoigne's dentist chair incident, Arsenal's Tuesday Club and Liverpool's pre-match trip to a brewery are long gone.

They have been replaced by tales of Cristiano Ronaldo's spartan diet, of Antonio Conte's gruelling physical conditioning regimes and of beds being installed at training grounds.

We are now in the uber-professional era of football and at no time is that more evident than around Christmas when fixtures pile up and temptation to stray from the prescribed path is at its greatest.

While most people will spend the next few weeks indulging by celebrating, socialising and eating and drinking to excess, footballers will have to remain focused on winning matches.

That means forgoing the entire tub of chocolates in front of the TV, the heaps of cheese and crackers and the Christmas tipple.

But while that is undoubtedly a sacrifice in most peoples' eyes, they will not be alone in trying to get through the festive period without piling on the pounds.

That is because players have plenty of people fighting in their corner - and, increasingly, that does not just mean the staff at their club.

Although the clubs do work hard to keep their employees fit and healthy and players do spend a lot of their time at training grounds, the focus has changed in recent years.

Conte and Steven Gerrard can ban ketchup and emphasise the importance of having the "right mentality", going "above and beyond" and "striving to be elite" as much as they like, but ultimately they cannot enforce those rules outside of club grounds.

Thankfully for Gerrard and co, the vast majority of Premier League footballers are on board; they want to maximise their potential and do everything in their power to perform on the pitch.

With the will to finely tune the craft - and, crucially, the disposable income to make it happen - an industry has sprung up around football.

From extravagance to essential

Private chefs and nutritionists are now growing in number and in importance to footballers, who are making use of every tool available to them.

Premier League clubs have the budget to try and provide the very best for their most prized assets, but it is the desire for a personal touch which has led more and more players to seek out their own solutions.

Those needs are now being fulfilled by people like private chef Rachel Muse, who just 10 years ago had no involvement in football whatsoever.

But working for one footballer client in 2013 changed everything, opening a door to a new world. As director of Talk Eat Laugh, Muse now caters for players spread all over the country.

To begin with Muse says her company would "get the outliers and the anomalies" as clients: players with specific dietary needs or players from different cultures and religions who were struggling with sourcing and preparing their own food away from the training ground.

She says some were even embarrassed to tell friends and family that they were using a private chef. There was a stigma attached to the idea of a rich young man frittering money away on a luxury expense.

"That now has gone," Muse tells Mirror Sport. "When we started it was seen as an extravagance, an indulgence.

"Now people are understanding that if they want to be playing top-flight football when they are 28, 29, 30 then they need to sort themselves out when they're 22, 23, 24, or before that.

"Start eating and sleeping properly and really take the idea of being an athlete beyond the fact that it is just what you do when you're at work - it's what you do with your entire life.

"Take it seriously and don't just think you're an athlete when you've got your boots on. If you think 'I'm an athlete when I've got my boots off as well. I'm going to look after my body as best I can.'

"That is changing. You've got the older players at clubs telling the younger players to sort themselves out. The ethos has changed."

Many footballers are youngsters who have little practical experience of cooking. Some are living away from home for the first time.

Clubs recognise not only their duty of care, but also the potential performance benefits private chefs can provide. While some keep everything in-house, many are embracing the growth industry.

"We've been going from strength to strength in the last three or four years," Muse says. "Clubs now realise that when they don't have their eyeballs on the players, they can be eating Nandos, poptarts and Haribo."

Better understanding

It is not just the people who cook the food who are part of the cycle: nutritionists also play a vital role.

That is where people like Ed Tooley come in. Tooley is a performance nutritionist who works with City Football Group as a consultant and has previously worked for West Brom, Norwich and Crystal Palace, as well as with some Premier League footballers privately.

His role is to speak with the club, assess the player's needs and then design a plan for the chef to implement.

That process is now much more streamlined, as understanding of the importance of nutrition grows. Previously it wasn't just heavy pub sessions which were a problem.

"I've been into a club before in pre-season and lunch was fantastic for the players. Steak and Lobster Thermidor were the choices," Tooley says.

"Everyone loved it, because it was high-quality dining and they had a former exec chef. Fantastic, but you've just done a hard 90 minutes in the morning, and you've got the same in the afternoon.

"You're going to be running around with that in you because it's not going to digest as it's high fat."

As well as advising club chefs, Tooley will also work one-on-one with players, carrying out tests and assessing their body composition so he can put together a bespoke nutrition plan which fits in with the individual's schedule and needs.

There are lots of factors to consider. Everything is distilled into a spreadsheet which is then shared with the chef.

Meal plans are based on a rolling schedule, depending on when match days fall, with varying amounts of protein, fat and carbohydrates for each.

For example, if a player avoids injury and any other external factors which may alter things, their needs for the day four days before a match, known as matchday -4, could be 45g of protein, 10g of fat and 65g of carbohydrate.

Muse will then take that information and use all her creativity and skill to fashion a meal for the player.

"You ask the player what they would like to eat," Muse explains. "Because that ratio of proteins to fats to carbs could be made into a thousand different meals.

"The trick is making the meal that the player wants to eat, that they will happily eat and think 'I'm getting away with it, I'm eating my favourite tea!'

"That's the 'magic' of what we do. We make food that the player wants to eat, but in a way that the nutritionist is more than happy for them to eat."

Little gains

These are professional relationships established for performance reasons. But they are also personal ones: the chefs cook in the client's house, lay the table, serve them dinner and do the washing up.

It is beneficial right across the board - and word spreads quickly. There are now some clubs where half the playing squad are employing private chefs.

"You'll find a lot more players now having a private chef," Tooley says.

"It's not because the player and his wife or partner are lazy. It's because they want someone to do it to a degree that's going to support them, so the player can rest at the same time.

"They realise that they get home, have a bit of family time and then they need to recover."

Kevin de Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan, Luke Shaw, Paul Pogba and Phil Jones are all known to be clients of Manchester-based chef Jonny Marsh, while England captain Harry Kane has spoken openly about why he employs a private chef.

"It kind of clicked in my head that a football career is so short. It goes so quickly, you have to make every day count," Kane said in 2017.

"I have a chef at home to eat the right food, helping recovery. You can't train as hard as you'd like when you have so many games, so you have to make the little gains elsewhere, like with food."

Those "little gains" could be crucial around the Christmas period when games are relentless. And while private chefs and nutritionists won't advocate a third helping of pigs in blankets, it doesn't have to be plain chicken, broccoli and brown rice on December 25.

"Obviously a typical Christmas Day for the average person is a huge excess of calories," Tooley says.

"If the players are playing on Boxing Day and they don't have to travel then they can have Christmas dinner, but we'd advise them to stick to normal quantities around their matchday -1 and keep the really fatty foods and alcohol to an absolute minimum."

As ever, performance remains the key concern. But it seems Christmas cheer will still be on the menu in the houses of Premier League stars this winter.