Andriy Shevchenko is ready to acknowledge he had a tough time settling in at Stamford Bridge. But the Ukranian is now looking forward to ensuring a winning end to the season

Coleridge's mariner only had an albatross around his neck. Roman Abramovich's favourite footballer had a £30 million price tag hanging heavily from his shoulders, a weight that finally looked to have been lifted late last month when Andriy Shevchenko swivelled and hit home the ball with the sweetest of left-foot shots to help his new club, Chelsea, into the English FA Cup semi-finals.

That was the Shevchenko of old. The Shevchenko that is the second-highest goal-scorer in the history of the Champions' League. And the Shevchenko needed for Chelsea to beat Valencia in the European Cup quarter-finals, the first leg of which is staged at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday.

For all of the Ukrainian captain's experience, for all of his years of mastery when playing for Dynamo Kiev and Milan, for all of the apparent ease with which he had accumulated his 267 career goals before this season, the pressure of expectation on Shevchenko since joining the English champions last summer for a British transfer record fee has, he admits, borne down on him during his first season at Chelsea.

"It's unbelievable really," Shevchenko says. "It could never happen that a player after seven great years at Milan could change everything in one month and expect to adapt immediately.

"It's natural that I'm going to need time to get used to my new surroundings."

And now, at the business-end of the season, Shevchenko is looking more comfortable in his Chelsea blue, which ought to worry Quique Flores, the Valencia coach, and other Spanish fans, who will remember the famous European night when the Ukrainian scored a first-half hat-trick for Kiev at the Camp Nou. "It was the night I was discovered'," Shevchenko, now 30, says. "After that there was no hiding."

Certainly there has been nowhere to hide this season, with the immaculately dressed footballer-cum-Armani poster boy and his American glamour model wife, Kristen Pazik, being under the spotlight off the pitch as much as on it, with Shevchenko a constant target for London's paparazzi as well as centre backs.

Since the new year, Shevchenko has set flash bulbs exploding on the pitch, with seven of his season's 13 goals coming in the past 14 games. Shevchenko's contribution in the first-half of the season to Chelsea's cause was also under-rated, as his earnest endeavours did much to create the space and opportunities for his strike partner, Didier Drogba, to notch up 29 goals before yesterday's match at Watford.

As well as attention, there has been tension, too. Chelsea's oil billionaire owner, Abramovich, may have been able to play the ultimate game of Fantasy Football by actually buying his favourite player, but the size of the transfer fee did much to focus blame for Chelsea's mis-firing early performances on Shevchenko and the rifts in the club hierarchy.

Certainly, Jose Mourinho, the coach, altered the 4-3-2-1 formation he had used to great effect in his first two seasons in London, apparently to accommodate Shevchenko and the equally expensive (in wages terms, at least) Michael Ballack. Had the owner issued an edict to Mourinho that Shevchenko was undroppable? Had the coach and his boss had a bust up? Why was Abramovich missing so many of his team's matches?

"The situation was that I came in as a new player, the fee was high and the expectation was high," Shevchenko says, refusing to be drawn on the latest episodes of that new soap opera, westenders.

He also endeavours to avoid being seen to be too close to Abramovich. "He's the owner of the club. He's my boss and I'm his employee. I want to keep it that way."

The thoughtful Ukrainian is also determined. "I have been attacked from all sides, but I intend to carry on. I will grit my teeth. I am not a quitter.

"I want to win things with this team. It is a great team and it is important to play for a great team. I am staying here and continuing to work to fit inside the team because I want to show people the real me."

In truth, there are genuine football reasons for some of Shevchenko's less impressive displays, not least the hamstring injury which he played through during the summer in order to lead his national side in their first appearance at the World Cup finals.

And, once at Chelsea, some of the service Shevchenko received from a rearranged team was less than inspired. The accomodation of the lacklustre Ballack, then the absence of midfield linchpin Michael Essien,who spent two months at centre back covering for the injured John Terry were factors. Yet despite such disruptions, Chelsea have won the League Cup, they are in the FA Cup semi-finals, they have a great chance of advancing to the European Cup semis, and remain poised to take advantage of any mistakes Manchester United might make in the Premiership, however unlikely.

"I feel good," Shevchenko says, "especially in the last two months. Things have got much better for me on the pitch, I feel very comfortable here now."

Mourinho, for one, appears more than happy with Shevchenko's contributions, as do the fickle Stamford Bridge fans who have failed to warm to Chelsea's other £120,000-per-week newcomer, Ballack. "When I play, I can see that the fans are really behind me," Shevchenko says.

Little wonder after his wonder goal against Chelsea's arch rivals, Spurs.

"I think it is one of the best I have scored in my career," he says, relishing the possibility of playing in the first Cup Final at the new Wembley. "I played in the old Wembley. It was a special stadium with a great atmosphere. To be in the first final in the new stadium would be a special moment."

Chelsea's other target this season is undoubtedly the Champions League final. By repute, Abramovich has ordered Mourinho to win this competition, or risk the sack. Ironically, it could just be the owner's favourite player who helps keep Mourinho in his job: "It's definitely possible for us to win the Champions' League," Shevchenko says. Another European goal on Wednesday night against Valencia would do no harm in that quest.