El Niño - Fernando José Torres Sanz

Ade wrote:

Israeli Yossi Benayoun was booed in the first half, but Chelsea denied the crowd's reaction was anti-semitic.

What the hell

and I have no faith in Torres again now =[ I had a glimmer of hope a month ago but now meh.

Soul wrote:I agree with Ade. We could have invested 50mil in R&D to make Drogba younger

The Madrid One wrote:torres is not even top 10 striker anymore unfortunatley..

/troll?

11-20

seems realistic if things go bad

21-30 hopefully.

believe me guys chelsea is my fave club in england and i like chelsea alot, i hope villas boas makes a team that can battle with barcelona, so that if barca are not in the draw with us, then you guys take them out, and we take you out..

Sepi wrote:My ass Babel had more talent than Kuyt or Benayoun.

Babel's uselessness was one of the reasons we missed out on the title, since he barely had any effect coming off the bench. Kuyt was the best wide player in the league after CR that year, Benny exploded to life after X-Mas, and Riera had a great first half of the season.

Babel = Useless throughout other than the winner vs Mancs.

Yossi and Kuyt have more football intelligence in their semen than Babel in his entire body/brain

ynwa wrote:

Sepi wrote:My ass Babel had more talent than Kuyt or Benayoun.

Babel's uselessness was one of the reasons we missed out on the title, since he barely had any effect coming off the bench. Kuyt was the best wide player in the league after CR that year, Benny exploded to life after X-Mas, and Riera had a great first half of the season.

Babel = Useless throughout other than the winner vs Mancs.

Yossi and Kuyt have more football intelligence in their semen than Babel in his entire body/brain

He was one of the best players that came out of Ajax's academy... An Ajax coach said that, he was a coach when Ajax had Sneijder and Ibra. He would of been one of the best wingers in the world today if we actually played him/he wasn't rapping.

EDIT: @ TMO... make up your mind. You said LFC was your favourite club in England and Stevie was your fav player.

The Madrid One wrote:

ynwa wrote:

Sepi wrote:My ass Babel had more talent than Kuyt or Benayoun.

Babel's uselessness was one of the reasons we missed out on the title, since he barely had any effect coming off the bench. Kuyt was the best wide player in the league after CR that year, Benny exploded to life after X-Mas, and Riera had a great first half of the season.

Babel = Useless throughout other than the winner vs Mancs.

Yossi and Kuyt have more football intelligence in their semen than Babel in his entire body/brain

He was one of the best players that came out of Ajax's academy... An Ajax coach said that, he was a coach when Ajax had Sneijder and Ibra. He would of been one of the best wingers in the world today if we actually played him/he wasn't rapping.

EDIT: @ TMO... make up your mind. You said LFC was your favourite club in England and Stevie was your fav player.

i like liverpool, lol steven gerrard is my fave english player ever i guess, but i like chelsea a bit more that pool i think.

Fernando Torres at pains to turn torrid time into triumph for Chelsea

Chelsea forward is confident his form will return despite looking uncomfortable in the team on their Asian tour

A quartet of Chelsea players were presented with the club's new away shirt at a kit launch and community event here on Tuesday, each holding the black replica up for the cameras to reveal a single word printed in Cantonese and English across its back. Petr Cech's read "Champion". Salomon Kalou showed off "Victory" and Frank Lampard "Happiness", but the flashbulbs popped most as Fernando Torres held aloft "Triumph".

It is almost six months into the Spaniard's career as a Chelsea player but, still, the watching world seeks evidence that prising him from Liverpool constitutes a coup. The focus has fixed upon him from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok to Hong Kong, much to the clear frustration of the manager, André Villas-Boas. At a club still considering how best to make waves in the transfer market this summer, the search for the Torres who rampaged over allcomers in his early days at Anfield remains the issue of the moment.

To be under such scrutiny in pre-season is cruel, centred as it is on a forward who, like his team-mates, is still building up fitness and searching for finesse. None of Chelsea's tourists in the far east has dazzled and, even when pitted against weaker opposition, neither would they have expected to flourish. As public as they are, the fixtures played in Asia are warm-ups for a long campaign and the squad are still learning what is expected of them under Villas-Boas. This team are gearing up for the match at Stoke City next month, not the Premier League Asia Cup fixture with Kitchee on Wednesday afternoon.

Yet the attention is inevitable nevertheless. So staggering was the £50m outlay lavished to secure the World Cup winner, and so anticlimactic his impact over the last few months of Carlo Ancelotti's tenure, that doubt has festered. Before departing for Malaysia, Torres had heralded this "a new start", claiming he was "settled and happy, feeling sharper". But there was to be no welcome flurry of goals against a Malaysia XI or the Thailand All Stars to ease the nerves and confirm his revitalised state of mind. He will most likely start Wednesday's game on the bench with Didier Drogba to play an hour. Each scoreless or peripheral appearance, perhaps harshly, merely extends the hangover.

Torres was asked whether he feared being unable to return to the prolific form of his early Liverpool days at the question and answer session prior to the training clinic in Hong Kong on Tuesday. "I am 27," he replied. "I don't forget [how] to score goals. I will score." Yet he still appears to be a figure in need of a reminder of his qualities. There are flashes of frustration, and desperation to succeed, in his play now that are to be expected. Yuri Zhirkov's sloppy delivery in one drill at the Hong Kong Stadium on Tuesday night prompted a livid reaction from the striker. He had been denied by the goalkeeper in Kuala Lumpur and had snatched at his clearest sight of goal in Bangkok. Had either chance been converted, a sense of relief would have settled in by now.

Torres, however, still seems uncomfortable in this team. He is a forward who needs service to thrive, yet Chelsea still lack a creator through the middle – a Luka Modric to spark the forward line into life – or natural, teasing wingers out wide. Villas‑Boas prefers to concentrate on the qualities of the collective over the individual, but the fact that his transfer priority is to secure a playmaker is revealing.

With the supply line inconsistent, Torres appears lonely, his body language exasperated at times. He is not a player who can muscle his way into a contest like Drogba. He revels more in gliding on to cleverly weaved passes, stretching defenders in the channels that are often occupied by team-mates. The process of Chelsea getting to know their record signing is still ongoing.

There is at least a desire within the setup to coax the best from the World Cup winner. No one has given up on making this arrangement work. Torres, John Terry has insisted, is not toiling in the same way that Andriy Shevchenko, himself an eye‑catching £30m signing from Milan, once did so protractedly at Stamford Bridge. "Torres has been open about the injury he suffered at the World Cup," said the captain. "Ideally he would have liked to have scored more goals than he did after joining us. But he's happy, he's settled. Naturally there's a bit of pressure on him, but he can deal with it. He's one of the best strikers in the world, after all, and is hungry to win."

That hunger can yet be satisfied. There is time, still, yet for Torres to prove he really is the "triumph" his shirt proclaimed – a goalscoring start to the new season will reassure – but this is a striker who needs his luck to change. Four years ago, the Spaniard arrived in Hong Kong as a recently signed Liverpool player to be thrust into a debut against Portsmouth once international clearance had been granted. He promptly missed a penalty as Pompey claimed the trophy. "A lot of things have happened since then," he said on Tuesday. There must also be plenty more to come.