Torres was successful during his time with Chelsea

Indulge me a bit, imagine handing questionnaires to Chelsea fans at the Shed End Stand, prior to a match. The only question on it being: Was Fernando Torres a success at your Club? I will be inclined to think the answer will be lopsided and the inference, an emphatic ‘no’.

However, the man in question himself seems to think otherwise, he always makes the right statements to the media, so you can’t rule out possibility of him churning out politically correct ones. He said soon after he returned to his Childhood club of Atletico Madrid after having his loan deal to AC Milan was made permanent. He said;

“Chelsea gave me what I was looking for when I left Liverpool – trophies,” and the contentious one: “I’ll always see it as a success.”

It could all be a matter of perspective, if you are a statistic freak, you’ll be less than impressed by his outlay of 45 goals in 172 matches and how long it took him to break his duck in particular.

You could also argue that he has had an indirect link to the managerial upheaval in the last five years, Carlo was the guy who couldn’t get the new £50 million striker to score, he had to go. Andre Villas Boas also persevered and eventually got the chop just after benching Torres in a high profile match. Rafa Benitez was his coach at Liverpool and a fellow Spaniard; he had marginal success and Torres got a haul of 22 in 7 different competitions, unfortunately for him. Rafa was the “Interim one”. Then came Chelsea hero Roberto Di Matteo, he too got the sack after he started Eden Hazard against Juventus in the CL, a match that hung in the balance no thanks to Fernando not scoring much needed goals – he too got the sack afterwards.

Now from a Torres apologist point of view or just a regular ‘glass is half full’ person; here are the few limelights of his ordeal at SW6, Fulham Road, London:

– The Semi final goal against Barcelona in the Champions League which he scored after a 50-yard run and finished with panache. 

– His FA Cup goal against Brentford which ensured Benitez’s team didn’t crash out at the 4th round of Football’s oldest competition.

-His neat goal vs Benfica in the Europa League final.

-And arguably his biggest contribution which was winning ‘that’ corner against Bayern after coming off the bench at the Allianz ArenA.

There could be others, you’ll help us out perhaps in the comments section.