Liverpool FC Forum

Interesting article on ESPN from Jolly
This stat certainly stands out in the Tale of two cities and clubs

  The Spaniard scored 65 goals in 102 league games for Liverpool. He has mustered a mere 19 in 109 for Chelsea.

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Torres' English exploits leave behind pair of legacies


Posted by Richard Jolly

Fernando Torres' time at Chelsea and Liverpool couldn't have been any more different.

It was a moment to illustrate the different generations at Stamford Bridge. After Sunday’s 0-0 draw with Norwich, Tomas Kalas, a veteran of one league start, was asked to take on the duties of photographer by his elders. The core four of the Roman Abramovich era wanted their picture taken together, perhaps for the last time.

John Terry, Frank Lampard, Petr Cech and Ashley Cole have made more than 2,100 Chelsea appearances between them. There may not be too many more. Cole’s tears led many to conclude he will not be at Stamford Bridge next season; it is not certain any of them will return. If this looked a fond farewell -- to the left-back, and perhaps to others -- it might have been a send-off for others.

Cech, Cole, Terry and Lampard are contenders -- some would say shoo-ins -- for places in an all-time Chelsea XI. Fernando Torres’ place in club history seems secure for another reason: Conscious of financial fair play, they are unlikely to pay 50 million pounds for anyone again in a hurry. If this was goodbye to the record-breaker, however, it was stripped of sentiment. His was an ineffectual cameo. It was sadly symptomatic of his Chelsea career.

The costliest player in British football history may be used as bait and in part exchange for Diego Costa. Jose Mourinho’s willingness to sign a prolific striker could allow Torres a sentimental homecoming to Atletico Madrid. Inter Milan, showing a strange desire to round up declining greats from the Premier League, are also mooted to be interested. Whichever happens, there is the sense that Chelsea need to clear the decks in the forward department. Torres’ time in England seems to be coming to an end.

It has lasted seven years, split down the middle by a history-making move; its astronomical fee superbly engineered, albeit indirectly, by Newcastle, who banked 35 million pounds for Andy Carroll in a hyperinflationary chain reaction. It is a career of two halves, the extremes shown by the statistics. The Spaniard scored 65 goals in 102 league games for Liverpool. He has mustered a mere 19 in 109 for Chelsea.



He was voted the third-best player in the world in 2008; at times, he has only seemed third in the pecking order among Chelsea’s disparaged band of forwards this season. He was fast and feared, lithe and lethal at Anfield. He has been slowing and struggling, diminished and derided at Stamford Bridge.

At Liverpool, he was reminiscent of Michael Owen, and not just because Anfield affection turned to enmity when he joined bitter rivals. The extraordinary speed that rendered him ideally suited to counter-attacking football meant he was as pivotal to Rafa Benitez’s style of football as the Englishman had been to Gerard Houllier’s game plan.

At Chelsea, he became the second Shevchenko, Abramovich’s expensive folly, and as a side configured to play to Didier Drogba’s strengths again rarely related to a different sort of striker. Nor did he match the ethos his purchaser wanted to implement. The paradox in the owner’s desire for Barcelona-style football and Torres’ preference for Benitez’s swift breaks was one the Russian rarely seemed to understand.

Yet Torres’ blisteringly brilliant best proved seductive. He was Nemanja Vidic’s nemesis, part of the finest Liverpool team in a quarter of a century, half of a symbiotically superb strike duo with Steven Gerrard. Thierry Henry was the most devastating striker in Premier League history, but Torres belongs in the bracket immediately below him.

Or he did, anyway, until the knee surgery in 2010 which, more than his move from Liverpool to London, marks the real divide in his fortunes. Tellingly, that summer’s World Cup speedometers clocked Javier Hernandez as the fastest player; Torres was nowhere to be seen on the short list of sprinters. His magic ingredient had gone. Thereafter he had to work harder for goals; frustration was ever more apparent in the extended autumn to his career.


It brought to mind parallels with Liverpool’s past. Most of Anfield’s recent forward greats have peaked early and declined before their peers. Torres joins Owen and Robbie Fowler among those who both burnt out and then faded away. Chelsea’s fundamental flaw was in paying an exorbitant sum for a player whose game was in premature decay. For all the talk about his body language, the problem was his body.

And yet it is overly simplistic to portray his Chelsea career as a failure. He struck 22 times in all competitions last season, most during a reunion with Benitez that brought neither Spaniard the popularity they enjoyed at Anfield. He has secured the only major silverware of his club career at Stamford Bridge. He has struck in two Champions League semi-finals and was a part of their improbable march to continental glory in Munich in 2012. Yet it was a peculiarly Torres-esque triumph: a bit-part player began on the bench, wasn’t trusted to take a penalty in the shootout and looked detached, a loner excluding himself from the celebrations prompted by an astonishing collective feat.

Nor did he revel in what may prove his final Chelsea goal, albeit for a very different reason: it came against Atletico. It encapsulated the image of a man with too little to enjoy, who found Chelsea’s money rarely brought or bought him happiness, who seems to covet Atletico’s unquestioning affection and the extra acceleration he last displayed at Anfield.

It seems fitting, given his decline in potency, that his first Liverpool goal came against Chelsea, but, though his Blues debut came in the opposite fixture, he never breached the Merseysiders’ defence. They are the two Torreses England experienced: Liverpool’s high-speed destroyer and Chelsea’s sluggish, sometimes non-scoring striker. Yet if he is airbrushed out of the Premier League picture, the recent memories of the toiling Torres should not obscure the ruthless, exhilarating excellence he exhibited between 2007 and 2010.

Who gives a Sh*t ?

woof woof ! » Thu Sep 25, 2014 1:46 pm wrote:Who gives a Sh*t ?

scored a good goal the other day.

tubby » Tue Feb 01, 2011 1:42 pm wrote:If he repllicates his form of 2 years ago then it will essentially vindicate the move. Not that I give a but it would be better he if turns out to be shevchenko pt 2.

 

Torres in 2008 was better than Suarez in 2013/4.

Ahh.. but donkeys are cheap.

Anyone saw him scoring a double yesterday against Real? Must admit, I kinda felt glad for him.

Now he's left cheatski I wish him all the luck in the world.

Lovely player, didn't do so well when he left us... pay heed Suarez

Fernando Torres tops UEFA poll for best January transfer window signing

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/row-zed/f ... ll-5110436