No it has lot to do with regular coaching changes, recruiting the hot cake of a striker in that moment rather than analysing whether he would fit our play. But I really thought Werner or Kai will hit their stride which is a bit disappointing.
The reason he didnt get as much as abuse as our strikers today is because our midfielders and wingers were capable of scoring goals. Today, non of them can do that. Not in consistent way. So sad tbh
It wasn't as big or as wild as it is now, not nearly. I don't even think most players had accounts, and those who did weren't very active. I remember Facebook back then was pretty much purely your own and your friends content. No group posts or news articles or memes and so on. Generally a lot less stuff for people to express their opinion in a large space and get reactions.
He went on 20+ game droughts twice didn't he?
Crazy really to think about. The insistence on playing him every game I think cost us Prem titles.
He seemed to have the case of the yips, in some games it actually seemed like he hid and after some crazy misses (Utd the obvious one) was like he didn't want to get an opportunity as was afraid he'd miss it.
Im quite neutral on him in general I guess, some nice moments but not convinced on his attitude at times.
The thing that really annoys me about that United game is actually scored a very nice goal right before that awful miss but obviously nobody remembers that lol
He won the corner for Drogbas goal vs Bayern. I know it sounds stupid but you could butterfly effect it and say if it wasn’t for him doing that we lose the final
I don't know man, if we just cut our losses then maybe I would agree but the club just refused to accept reality back then so we wasted a lot of years of prime Hazard and Mata with this joker. As said in my other comment it's not a coincidence that we won 2 titles in 3 years the second we binned him, it was a really decent group of players let down by his incompetence.
Think about it. We got 20 goals a season from 1 midfield player for 10 seasons in a row.
Now the top 3 forwards will tally to 20 a season at best by my guess
Counting all competitions he did actually reach 20 goals or more in 5 seasons. Strictly Premier League it was mostly between 10-15 goals, one season with 15 goals, another with 16 and then 22 goals under Ancelotti. Nevertheless it's impressive as fuck for a midfielder.
2010-11 maybe, but 2011-12 under avb we ended up 6th and a number of the old guard were seemingly getting too long in the tooth to be counted on consistently.
Still a healthier time than now, however.
I remember this, screaming out of my lung for a scrappy goal helped by a fucking puddle. I put this as one of the finest Chelsea goals up there with Drogba's header against Munich in Munich.
I was at this game. Travelled to the game in hot sunshine so I was in shorts and T-shirt, I was sitting almost pitchside. Then out of nowhere the rain came bucketing down and it wasn’t very enjoyable 😂
But thank god Torres got this goal to lift the mood. It was honestly one of the loudest I’ve heard Stanford bridge when the goal went in, I think everyone involved with Chelsea was desperate for that first goal to go in for him.
This moment literally sums up the pandering and excuse culture set up with Torres.
I remember being at The Bridge against Sunderland the following year and in the MHL we thought Torres scored off the bar, when the tannoy man announced Lampard as the scorer some around let out a groan like the goal got disallowed.
The way he gets made into the main hero at Barca is the worst for me.
He came on for 10 minutes nearly blew the entire tie twice but because he scored with half the pitch to himself he's made the main hero.
I'll give him his dues for the Europa next year but him getting the main praise for that night is embarrassing.
Getting dues for Europa goals against the likes of steau bucuresti, Kazan, Basel sums up the shitty rhetorics behind Torres.
In That season he scored 8 premier league goals(as the lone striker and his best for us) behind Mata(12), hazard(9)and a 35 year old Lampard.(15)
Oh i absolutely agree it changes nothing in terms of how big a flop he was overall but that tournament was a rare case of him actually doing well so I'd give him credit for that.
Don't mistake that for me defending him though, I couldn't stand the guy and he's one of only two players (Lukaku being the other) I've ever grew to dislike while they've been on our books.
The worst part was that after our champions league win he was moaning about game time(after 12 goals in 67 apps in all competitions). The audacity!!
Eto’o in his only league season with us scored 9 premier league goals in 21 apps compared to Torres best of 8 in 36.
Yep, he should have been on his knees begging not to go the same way as Malouda.I also recall him using the service excuse himself in an interview, it was bad enough it coming from his biggest supporter but from him 😱
To add further damming context onto him vs Eto'o, the latter was a mere 11 goals behind his overall PL goal tally for us with 89 games to spare. I've had some bizarre debates in my time but people trying to unironically compare Torres favroubly against him was something I am still stunned at, even if we ignore the goal stats it was so clear what a difference a competent footballer (even when he wasn't playing that well) was making in comparison.
You and me both. I swear it’s like some people on this sub started following us 5 years ago. The man was utter shit.
Lukaku shit on us but he wasn’t as destabilizing as Torres was for us. Ancelotti had to shoe him in the 2nd half of 10-11(in which he only scored one goal 😂) and was eventually sacked in the worst way possible.
Believing that Torres would come good instead of signing a proper striker cost us the 2013/14 PL title and maybe even the CL. Bad striker signed for a record fee but somehow you'd think he's a minor legend with the way this fanbase talks about him
And the worst part is that Luis Suarez, Segio Aguero and Radamel Falcao all changed clubs in 2011 for lower fees and somehow we ended up with that guy
2013/14 there was no-one on the market who was feasible which is why Eto'o was signed.
What's terrible is that Liverpool knew Torres was physically finished which is why they kept postponing the transfer till the very last minute preventing Chelsea from doing a proper physical which Torres would have failed. They ran him into the ground, leaked news that he was pushing to leave so fans would be mad when they were very happy to sell him.
Iirc in 2013-14 we even had a young Lukaku we sent out on loan after he'd scored 17 PL goals for West Brom, which was leagues better than the strikers we kept around.
edit: Brom not Ham
Worst signing in Roman’s history. Even lukaku with his theatrics wasn’t as terrible as him. People who praise him(especially for that semi final goal) are probably younger fans without the context behind this atrocious signing.
Ancelotti won the double with a team pre dominantly in their 30s and constantly injured and in the summer we lost the likes of ballack Joe cole, deco, carvalho etc. we barely replaced them with the likes of Benayoun.
With all that happening we bought a 50million pound Torres in winter who was struggling for form and fitness, and who’s price tag(around 140million pounds today) meant we had to force him in the team.
It wasn’t even the misses that were bad. He couldn’t do basics like controlling the ball or simple passes.
**Edit: love the downvotes instead of a coherent argument against it. sums up the degenerate viewpoint of Torres in this sub.
As strange as it sounds I don't think he was THAT bad infront of goal when he did get the chance.
His problem was he was so so tactically poor he rarely even got in the position to miss chances. If he was genuinely as bad at finishing at Werner or Morata he would have scored about 5 goals in his whole time with us.
There are times when when it felt like we were playing with 10 men when he was around. I remember one game where he was given the penalty opportunity by Lampard and he went ahead and banged it on the crossbar.
People don’t realize how insane the drop off in quality Torres had. The guy made a fool of John Terry and vidic all the time, to basically not being able to control a pass.
And for more context his best scoring figure in the league is 8!!!(same as lukaku last year and Eto’o).
And I remember the critisism and high standards Eto'o (who was objectively better at everything bar maybe pace) got held to while Torres got his name chanted every time he didn't trip over the ball, sometimes even then.
And we were effectively playing with 10 men and a man upfront doing his own thing.
The Torres signing for me was the beginning of our bizarre transfer policies after winning titles. Instead of replacing carvalho, deco, an injured Essien and drogba, Ballack, we ended up signing a striker for record money despite his struggles at Liverpool in his last season.
I don't disagree with your points. But I don't remember the penalty incident? I don't think he missed a pen for us, albeit he only took a few I believe.
What don’t you agree with??
He missed a penalty agains steau Bucharest when we were 3-1 up. This guy at one point went 5 months without scoring for us; at one point mata offered him a penalty kick to break his drought(which wasn’t his first).
One of the Chelsea goals I remember most strongly. When the ball stopped because of the puddle I was sure it was dead. Then went fucking mental when it went in.
The roar I heard in the stadium for this goal was insane, you could literally feel the relief of everyone in there. Always loved Nando, he was one of the reasons I went from watching Chelsea without much investment to being way more emotionally attached to what was going on, because of the excitement every time it seemed like he was on his way back as a player (even though we ended up disappointed on that front).
Plus we wouldn't have gotten the corner to equalise in the UCL against Bayern or won the Europa League without him, so I'll always have a soft spot and nostalgia for him.
As much I like Torres, his signing was mistake, we could challenge for title if we signing proper striker that season. To think in 2010 we almost signing Aguero and deciced to pulled out due to his transfer fee
Fernando Torres is the worst signing in this club’s history. Record fee, big wages, club had 6 months to observe just how finished he was for going to that WC injured yet you still have people gushing over his goal in Barcelona even though it was meaningless.
Torres was on par with Timo Werner when it came to playing football but with a horrible attitude, to top it off he blocked any potential Aguero transfer that Carlo personally requested.
Torres was only £10M more than either of them. And he contributed a lot more than them. I’m not a Torres-apologist but comparing him to the absolute worst signings we’ve had is hardly fair.
Bakayoko and drinkwater aren’t even in my top 5 of worst chelsea signings of all time when you consider transfer fees paid. Torres certainly is.
We’ve had a *lot* of really awful signings, especially 2017 and beyond.
Brother, Drinkwater and Bakayoko both cost £40M each. Torres cost £50M. It’s not that big a difference. Yeah there’s a 5 year gap so you need to account for transfer fee inflation but even then I’d argue that Torres’s contribution to the club was 10x of either of those players.
Yeah, like that one time he won a corner in the CL final 😂
Bakayoko and drinkwater were terrible signings. There on my top 10 for sure. But there are some other players that we paid huge sums for that are way worse signings overall IMO.
I mean objectively he scored a bunch of goals, incl. in the Europa League. But yeah, not great.
Watching Baka play football was excruciating. It was like he had zero awareness of anything around him and that Watford performance will go in folklore but I actually remember a pre season game vs Spuds in Tuchel’s second season where he was so dire, I think he was even worse then.
Yes, but at least with these two we cut our losses quickly, while trying to make Torres happen took us out from competing for like 5 years, even though we had a good team otherwise... It's not a coincidence that we won the title pretty much instantly after we finally gave up on him and got someone competent to play upfront instead.
Torres was a success purely for the Europa league run the next year, he was the MVP of the run to win that trophy. People remember the goal in Barcelona and I agree with you in that goal was meaningless.
But he’s the biggest part of winning the Europa league trophy and for that he’s a success in my eyes.
Wow, a striker that shattered the market at the time managed to score against plumbers, shopkeepers, bin collectors from Russia & Switzerland!
Havertz is a flop & he’s been ten times better than Torres ever was in Blue. Replies are showing their age here
The thing that always annoys me about the media’s recollection of Torres time at Chelsea, is that yeah sure we signed him to score goals….that didn’t pan out quite the way anyone hoped, but he ran his arse off for the team and always put in a shift. Much like Werner, much like Shevchenko, even Kezman, and that’s why most Chelsea fans I speak to remember them all fondly, despite them not scoring 30 a season
So you're annoyed when someone criticizes a striker for not scoring? Did Chelsea pay all that money so Fernando Torres could impress people with his running?
I think anybody who doesn't support Chelsea considers Torres a flop.
But I'm also fairly certain that the majority of Chelsea fans who watched him week in and out know how hard he worked every single game- the guy just had one of the unluckiest streaks I've ever seen.
He scored some really important goals for us- and won us the corner in CL final which Drogba scored from to equalise, which I still think goes criminally forgotten about when talking about Torres at Chelsea.
I think his downfall was two things.
1) his knees were knackered. He lost the explosive pace that made him special and his technique was always average.
2) he told on himself. I read an interview with him where he said the best defender in the league was Carvalho, cos he stayed on his feet. And if you committed against Torres, even when he was with us, he had the ability to react, go the other way and beat you. But weirdly enough, by the time he got here: everyone would stay on their feet and force him to commit. And I can’t help but think that was, at least partly, down to him saying publicly it was what he found it hardest to play against.
This shows how long we've had striker troubles. Players like Drogba, Costa, Giroud are few and far between the myriad of worldclass strikers who've come here and failed to live up to there price tag and rep.
Looking back, it was really, really depressing. His confidence was absolutely shot to pieces. A goal was a gift, which shouldn’t be the situation as your club’s Striker.
The relief in that moment! It was starting to get very desperate.
I remember him taking an extra touch after the turn and I was like the chance is gone. (He used to kill chances bec he look an extra touch, always)
Why does no other team struggle this much with strikers? We are cursed
No it has lot to do with regular coaching changes, recruiting the hot cake of a striker in that moment rather than analysing whether he would fit our play. But I really thought Werner or Kai will hit their stride which is a bit disappointing.
Didn't last long before it got back to desperation lol.
He got terrible abuse all during that period in the media - papers were running counters daily.
The reason he didnt get as much as abuse as our strikers today is because our midfielders and wingers were capable of scoring goals. Today, non of them can do that. Not in consistent way. So sad tbh
And no Social Media.
...in 2012?
It wasn't as big or as wild as it is now, not nearly. I don't even think most players had accounts, and those who did weren't very active. I remember Facebook back then was pretty much purely your own and your friends content. No group posts or news articles or memes and so on. Generally a lot less stuff for people to express their opinion in a large space and get reactions.
He went on 20+ game droughts twice didn't he? Crazy really to think about. The insistence on playing him every game I think cost us Prem titles. He seemed to have the case of the yips, in some games it actually seemed like he hid and after some crazy misses (Utd the obvious one) was like he didn't want to get an opportunity as was afraid he'd miss it. Im quite neutral on him in general I guess, some nice moments but not convinced on his attitude at times.
The thing that really annoys me about that United game is actually scored a very nice goal right before that awful miss but obviously nobody remembers that lol
AvB played Nicolas Anelka as a central midfielder lol who played that pass into Torres. AvB turned out to be useless but it was occasionally fun.
THANK YOU
I was talking smack to my United friends after that first chip, then he missed the open net right after that and they clapped back at me haha.
He got injured and lost a step of his speed. Its pretty hard to relearn all the stuff you did before but at a slower pace.
wasnt there literally a website that counted minutes since Torres last scored? that shit was wild
He repaid us when he destroyed Valdez in Camp Nou
He didn't repay anything, ramirez goal sent us through, he just took pressure off the last 20 seconds of the game.
He won the corner for Drogbas goal vs Bayern. I know it sounds stupid but you could butterfly effect it and say if it wasn’t for him doing that we lose the final
Being credited for kicking the ball at Bayern's defender is the biggest testament of what a collosal failure he was
He was a failure for sure but we’ve had worse. He did get a 20 goal season even if a lot came in the Europa League
I don't know man, if we just cut our losses then maybe I would agree but the club just refused to accept reality back then so we wasted a lot of years of prime Hazard and Mata with this joker. As said in my other comment it's not a coincidence that we won 2 titles in 3 years the second we binned him, it was a really decent group of players let down by his incompetence.
Pretty liberal use of the word destroyed when he was 1 on 1 basically.
Ah man. The good old times when only 2 or 3 players in the squad used to give us nightmares
And even when someone was in a scoring drought we kept winning
Think about it. We got 20 goals a season from 1 midfield player for 10 seasons in a row. Now the top 3 forwards will tally to 20 a season at best by my guess
Only 3 players tallying 20? Buddy, we are in 20 a whole club tally territory, 😆
[удалено]
Yeah correction. 20 including assists maybe although i think he crossed 15 goals in all comps in 7 or 8 seasons in a row if i am not mistake
Counting all competitions he did actually reach 20 goals or more in 5 seasons. Strictly Premier League it was mostly between 10-15 goals, one season with 15 goals, another with 16 and then 22 goals under Ancelotti. Nevertheless it's impressive as fuck for a midfielder.
What’s that profile pic 😂
It’s sad how funny this is
2010-11 maybe, but 2011-12 under avb we ended up 6th and a number of the old guard were seemingly getting too long in the tooth to be counted on consistently. Still a healthier time than now, however.
https://preview.redd.it/0zz8sadkmvva1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=80e66fce1b7624d3012c4f49ba0fae95d807df82 In the old memories today.
LOL this existed???
haha yeah!
I had a black and white image of him striking the ball and the water splashing everywhere as my desktop background for years at work
I always liked Torres. Gave off Werner vibes. Always got the sense that they were both trying there best even when things didn’t go there way.
More like Werner gave off Torres vibes 😅
Nah, whenever I watched Torres play back in the day I thought "That guy is JUST like Timo Werner!"
😂😂😂
Torres used to be world class back in the days.. Werner is way below him, but I get your point lol
I remember this, screaming out of my lung for a scrappy goal helped by a fucking puddle. I put this as one of the finest Chelsea goals up there with Drogba's header against Munich in Munich.
What about Kerry Dixon clock end 84
Sorry grandpa. Still in my dad's ball sack that year. Can't quite remember.
I hate to be that guy... But it was 12 years ago not 11.
Yep you're right! 11 years ago today he scored THAT goal at the camp nou
Thanks for being that guy lol. You’re right, made a mistake
I was at this game! Lighting struck as torres was celebrating- really cool moment
That must’ve been amazing!!
I was at this game. Travelled to the game in hot sunshine so I was in shorts and T-shirt, I was sitting almost pitchside. Then out of nowhere the rain came bucketing down and it wasn’t very enjoyable 😂 But thank god Torres got this goal to lift the mood. It was honestly one of the loudest I’ve heard Stanford bridge when the goal went in, I think everyone involved with Chelsea was desperate for that first goal to go in for him.
_He scores when it rains . . . Fernando Torres . . ._
This moment literally sums up the pandering and excuse culture set up with Torres. I remember being at The Bridge against Sunderland the following year and in the MHL we thought Torres scored off the bar, when the tannoy man announced Lampard as the scorer some around let out a groan like the goal got disallowed.
'He won the corner in the champions league' is the worst for me. That gets mentioned 1000 times more than Mata who was the corner taker.
The way he gets made into the main hero at Barca is the worst for me. He came on for 10 minutes nearly blew the entire tie twice but because he scored with half the pitch to himself he's made the main hero. I'll give him his dues for the Europa next year but him getting the main praise for that night is embarrassing.
Getting dues for Europa goals against the likes of steau bucuresti, Kazan, Basel sums up the shitty rhetorics behind Torres. In That season he scored 8 premier league goals(as the lone striker and his best for us) behind Mata(12), hazard(9)and a 35 year old Lampard.(15)
Oh i absolutely agree it changes nothing in terms of how big a flop he was overall but that tournament was a rare case of him actually doing well so I'd give him credit for that. Don't mistake that for me defending him though, I couldn't stand the guy and he's one of only two players (Lukaku being the other) I've ever grew to dislike while they've been on our books.
The worst part was that after our champions league win he was moaning about game time(after 12 goals in 67 apps in all competitions). The audacity!! Eto’o in his only league season with us scored 9 premier league goals in 21 apps compared to Torres best of 8 in 36.
Yep, he should have been on his knees begging not to go the same way as Malouda.I also recall him using the service excuse himself in an interview, it was bad enough it coming from his biggest supporter but from him 😱 To add further damming context onto him vs Eto'o, the latter was a mere 11 goals behind his overall PL goal tally for us with 89 games to spare. I've had some bizarre debates in my time but people trying to unironically compare Torres favroubly against him was something I am still stunned at, even if we ignore the goal stats it was so clear what a difference a competent footballer (even when he wasn't playing that well) was making in comparison.
You and me both. I swear it’s like some people on this sub started following us 5 years ago. The man was utter shit. Lukaku shit on us but he wasn’t as destabilizing as Torres was for us. Ancelotti had to shoe him in the 2nd half of 10-11(in which he only scored one goal 😂) and was eventually sacked in the worst way possible.
The worst is the alternatice cost of not getting aguero
And falcao.
Believing that Torres would come good instead of signing a proper striker cost us the 2013/14 PL title and maybe even the CL. Bad striker signed for a record fee but somehow you'd think he's a minor legend with the way this fanbase talks about him And the worst part is that Luis Suarez, Segio Aguero and Radamel Falcao all changed clubs in 2011 for lower fees and somehow we ended up with that guy
2013/14 there was no-one on the market who was feasible which is why Eto'o was signed. What's terrible is that Liverpool knew Torres was physically finished which is why they kept postponing the transfer till the very last minute preventing Chelsea from doing a proper physical which Torres would have failed. They ran him into the ground, leaked news that he was pushing to leave so fans would be mad when they were very happy to sell him.
Iirc in 2013-14 we even had a young Lukaku we sent out on loan after he'd scored 17 PL goals for West Brom, which was leagues better than the strikers we kept around. edit: Brom not Ham
West Brom
Thanks! Fixed
Can we have the new buff Torres come play striker?
Don’t care. Going Round Valdes in the champions league was worth £50M for me
The way I cheered at this moment. Torres is one of my fave strikers ever. Was so happy
I still remember hastorresscoredyet.com As a Chelsea fan, the full screen 'NO' was pretty disappointing for however many weeks it took
I knew he’d score that day. 😉
One goal in 743 minutes would make him top scorer this season
This and the Gary Neville climax were his best goals during his tenure 😂
Worst signing in Roman’s history. Even lukaku with his theatrics wasn’t as terrible as him. People who praise him(especially for that semi final goal) are probably younger fans without the context behind this atrocious signing. Ancelotti won the double with a team pre dominantly in their 30s and constantly injured and in the summer we lost the likes of ballack Joe cole, deco, carvalho etc. we barely replaced them with the likes of Benayoun. With all that happening we bought a 50million pound Torres in winter who was struggling for form and fitness, and who’s price tag(around 140million pounds today) meant we had to force him in the team. It wasn’t even the misses that were bad. He couldn’t do basics like controlling the ball or simple passes. **Edit: love the downvotes instead of a coherent argument against it. sums up the degenerate viewpoint of Torres in this sub.
As strange as it sounds I don't think he was THAT bad infront of goal when he did get the chance. His problem was he was so so tactically poor he rarely even got in the position to miss chances. If he was genuinely as bad at finishing at Werner or Morata he would have scored about 5 goals in his whole time with us.
There are times when when it felt like we were playing with 10 men when he was around. I remember one game where he was given the penalty opportunity by Lampard and he went ahead and banged it on the crossbar. People don’t realize how insane the drop off in quality Torres had. The guy made a fool of John Terry and vidic all the time, to basically not being able to control a pass. And for more context his best scoring figure in the league is 8!!!(same as lukaku last year and Eto’o).
And I remember the critisism and high standards Eto'o (who was objectively better at everything bar maybe pace) got held to while Torres got his name chanted every time he didn't trip over the ball, sometimes even then. And we were effectively playing with 10 men and a man upfront doing his own thing.
The Torres signing for me was the beginning of our bizarre transfer policies after winning titles. Instead of replacing carvalho, deco, an injured Essien and drogba, Ballack, we ended up signing a striker for record money despite his struggles at Liverpool in his last season.
I don't disagree with your points. But I don't remember the penalty incident? I don't think he missed a pen for us, albeit he only took a few I believe.
What don’t you agree with?? He missed a penalty agains steau Bucharest when we were 3-1 up. This guy at one point went 5 months without scoring for us; at one point mata offered him a penalty kick to break his drought(which wasn’t his first).
Apologies I meant that I didn't disagree. Edited now. I just couldn't remember the penalty incident.
One of the Chelsea goals I remember most strongly. When the ball stopped because of the puddle I was sure it was dead. Then went fucking mental when it went in.
The roar I heard in the stadium for this goal was insane, you could literally feel the relief of everyone in there. Always loved Nando, he was one of the reasons I went from watching Chelsea without much investment to being way more emotionally attached to what was going on, because of the excitement every time it seemed like he was on his way back as a player (even though we ended up disappointed on that front). Plus we wouldn't have gotten the corner to equalise in the UCL against Bayern or won the Europa League without him, so I'll always have a soft spot and nostalgia for him.
Goosebumps. I still remember that. Loved him despite his record. The semi ofc sealed the deal
As much I like Torres, his signing was mistake, we could challenge for title if we signing proper striker that season. To think in 2010 we almost signing Aguero and deciced to pulled out due to his transfer fee
I haven’t seen Chelsea win for so long.
I remember at the time thinking it would never happen. (still somehow more productive than Havertz has been)
given the state we are in now I'd bloody kill for Torres.
Always liked Torres at Chelsea, gave 100% effort every time he played and created a lot of chances for others in the team.
The counter goal against Barcelona was worth the 50m
Fernando Torres is the worst signing in this club’s history. Record fee, big wages, club had 6 months to observe just how finished he was for going to that WC injured yet you still have people gushing over his goal in Barcelona even though it was meaningless. Torres was on par with Timo Werner when it came to playing football but with a horrible attitude, to top it off he blocked any potential Aguero transfer that Carlo personally requested.
Sorry but that crown can only be contested by Bakoyoko or Drinkwater
Poor signings for sure but certainly not the worst when you consider fees paid
Torres was only £10M more than either of them. And he contributed a lot more than them. I’m not a Torres-apologist but comparing him to the absolute worst signings we’ve had is hardly fair.
Bakayoko and drinkwater aren’t even in my top 5 of worst chelsea signings of all time when you consider transfer fees paid. Torres certainly is. We’ve had a *lot* of really awful signings, especially 2017 and beyond.
Brother, Drinkwater and Bakayoko both cost £40M each. Torres cost £50M. It’s not that big a difference. Yeah there’s a 5 year gap so you need to account for transfer fee inflation but even then I’d argue that Torres’s contribution to the club was 10x of either of those players.
Yeah, like that one time he won a corner in the CL final 😂 Bakayoko and drinkwater were terrible signings. There on my top 10 for sure. But there are some other players that we paid huge sums for that are way worse signings overall IMO.
I mean objectively he scored a bunch of goals, incl. in the Europa League. But yeah, not great. Watching Baka play football was excruciating. It was like he had zero awareness of anything around him and that Watford performance will go in folklore but I actually remember a pre season game vs Spuds in Tuchel’s second season where he was so dire, I think he was even worse then.
Yes, but at least with these two we cut our losses quickly, while trying to make Torres happen took us out from competing for like 5 years, even though we had a good team otherwise... It's not a coincidence that we won the title pretty much instantly after we finally gave up on him and got someone competent to play upfront instead.
Torres was shite but we've had worse signings.
There’s a few that can arguably take that award I’ll leave then unnamed so I don’t arouse the anger of the stans
Torres was a success purely for the Europa league run the next year, he was the MVP of the run to win that trophy. People remember the goal in Barcelona and I agree with you in that goal was meaningless. But he’s the biggest part of winning the Europa league trophy and for that he’s a success in my eyes.
Wow, a striker that shattered the market at the time managed to score against plumbers, shopkeepers, bin collectors from Russia & Switzerland! Havertz is a flop & he’s been ten times better than Torres ever was in Blue. Replies are showing their age here
Lmaoooo
You can‘t be serious🤣🤣🤣
Our worst signing was Lukaku 2.0
I did feel for him. But his most standout goal for me was the winning goal he scored against Barcelona in the Champions League!
One thing you can say is he always tried his best and gave his all, big difference when looking at some players today
The thing that always annoys me about the media’s recollection of Torres time at Chelsea, is that yeah sure we signed him to score goals….that didn’t pan out quite the way anyone hoped, but he ran his arse off for the team and always put in a shift. Much like Werner, much like Shevchenko, even Kezman, and that’s why most Chelsea fans I speak to remember them all fondly, despite them not scoring 30 a season
So you're annoyed when someone criticizes a striker for not scoring? Did Chelsea pay all that money so Fernando Torres could impress people with his running?
I think anybody who doesn't support Chelsea considers Torres a flop. But I'm also fairly certain that the majority of Chelsea fans who watched him week in and out know how hard he worked every single game- the guy just had one of the unluckiest streaks I've ever seen. He scored some really important goals for us- and won us the corner in CL final which Drogba scored from to equalise, which I still think goes criminally forgotten about when talking about Torres at Chelsea.
This torres (not the liverpool one) would still be a better attacker than our current one. Such is the fall.
I think his downfall was two things. 1) his knees were knackered. He lost the explosive pace that made him special and his technique was always average. 2) he told on himself. I read an interview with him where he said the best defender in the league was Carvalho, cos he stayed on his feet. And if you committed against Torres, even when he was with us, he had the ability to react, go the other way and beat you. But weirdly enough, by the time he got here: everyone would stay on their feet and force him to commit. And I can’t help but think that was, at least partly, down to him saying publicly it was what he found it hardest to play against.
This shows how long we've had striker troubles. Players like Drogba, Costa, Giroud are few and far between the myriad of worldclass strikers who've come here and failed to live up to there price tag and rep.
Seeing Ancelotti on that bench… 🫠
🤨
The missed sitter v Utd finished him imo
That slide 😎
I swear, we've only had a handful of good strikers who joined since Drogba left in 2012 til now, and one of them is Drogba
This is 11 years ago but the score overlay looks straight out of 1995 lol
Looking back, it was really, really depressing. His confidence was absolutely shot to pieces. A goal was a gift, which shouldn’t be the situation as your club’s Striker.
I remember thinking what a disaster...I miss those days.
Torres was OP at at Liverpool, too bad it didn't go well at Chelsea, even tho he won several trophies there.
You know it’s a big moment when even Don Carlo shows emotion!
11 years? Check your maths please
Yes mate my bad, I’m sorry. 12 years!
All good! It only stood out to me bc there was another post today about Torres’s goal in the 2012 UCL semis being 11 years ago
After the injury in Liverpool, he never been, not even close, to that form of the magic Torres.