It hasn’t been easy for Fernando Torres since becoming a Chelsea player. Names circulating about him, as the team seems to be on a constant lookout for someone who’ll replace their very expensive failure. The Spaniard isn’t giving up, but he’s clearly not too pleased with himself or with what the club is doing in order to help him score in the rate he used to for his previous teams, which seems like something that happened in a different era, to a different player.
The latest name to be added to the Chelsea shortlist is Falcao, who’s actually been on it since the European Super Cup, a 4-1 win for Atletico Madrid, with Falcao scoring a first half hat trick. Torres looked like an amateur compared with the Colombian, and has looked like a player out of his depth so many times in the Chelsea uniforms, as long droughts in the Premier League continue to hamper his season, even if he is doing quite well in the Europa League and has scored 20 in all competitions.
His current scoring drought in 997 minutes long, not including injury time, still waiting for his first Premier League goal in 2013. The rotation between him and Demba Ba hasn’t been exactly productive for the two of them personally, although Chelsea are in pretty good form, closer and closer to securing a spot in the top 4 and the Champions League, still needing a strong finish, which includes a visit to Old Trafford, in order to make sure no disaster occurs along the way.
Torres, who might have made it a lot easier for the team if his scoring touch was just a little bit better (lets say slightly better than his 7 goals in 32 league matches), thinks it’s not his fault. It’s never his fault. After scoring only 6 goals last season he didn’t feel ashamed to approach the owner and demand a starting spot for next season (the current one), getting his wish, until too many goalless matches from the lost-looking striker triggered the purchasing of Demba Ba.
Every day you learn new things and you change a little bit. The key is to adapt to a new system, new players, a new style of football, and that takes some time. In my case, it has maybe taken more time than it should but after a couple of seasons here I can see how different the team are compared to when I arrived, with different players. We have to be clever and focused in the adaptation of the new ideas of the team, the manager and the kind of football we’re playing now. This is the main difference. My mind is more open than before and I can see what I have to do to improve.
Torres makes it sound like the tactics are all that’s keeping him back from scoring a goal or two each match. Despite playing with an extremely talented trio behind him, Torres often looks shaky, slow and simply rusty with the ball, despite hardly being off the pitch this season. One goal from him and his confidence boom, suddenly showing things we’re used to seeing in red from him, but one bad match is like an arrow to the chest for Torres, sinking in his on-pitch depression again.
Torres can’t be sold, because Chelsea don’t want to give up on a player they invested so much in. Maybe when his contract will be close to expiring we’ll see something happen, but for now, they’re stuck with one of the most expensive busts in football history if not the biggest of them. Unlike other great expensive failures in the past, Torres didn’t get injured in a career-ending way. He simply became a bad striker overnight, and can’t seem to pull himself out of the hole no matter what happens. He may think he still deserves a spot in the Chelsea lineup, but for a team that’s thinking about the grandest of titles, someone who scores once every five matches when it matters simply can’t be part of the setup.