What's Troubling Torres?

As the lights went out upon Craven Cottage late on Monday evening, the two men in the dugouts displayed contrasting emotions. Carlo Ancelotti’s famous raised eyebrow will have risen once more after Petr Cech rescued Chelsea from another embarrassing defeat in their home city.

Looking back to early September this would seem an unlikely scenario, with Chelsea scoring goals for fun and battering opposition seemingly regardless of their skills. At that point very few would have suggested Chelsea needed a striker, nevermind a striker who would set them back a cool £50million. Surely if Ancelotti had thought that reinforcements were needed then he would have made a move in the summer.

Carlo Ancelotti: Troubled

However Chelsea’s role as Premiership holders will surely be lost come mid-May, as they now stand 12 points behind leaders Manchester United, with both games against the Red Devils still to be played in this troubled season, not to mention troublesome games against two of the new breed of Premiership challengers, Manchester City and Tottenham.

Looking at how the season has panned out, it is difficult to pinpoint when things started going downhill for Chelsea, though a likely contender seems to be November 7^th, when the former club of new recruit Fernando Torres, Liverpool, narrowly overcame Chelsea 1-0 at Anfield. Looking at their record since then makes for grim reading; Played 16 Won 5 Drawn 5 Lost 6.

This form, and their lack of goalscoring, discounting the games against Bolton, Sunderland and Aston Villa is precisely what prompted Ancelotti to persuade Roman Abramovich to open his wallet in a manner not seen for some time.

The game against Fulham saw Chelsea draw another blank, even with their new charge at the spearhead of the attack and one must wonder what is occurring at Stamford Bridge, and indeed at their Cobham training ground.

It would be foolish, and perhaps even insulting to criticise Fernando Torres off the back of two games with new colleagues, but he has looked out of sorts for some time now.

Torres looking and feeling Blue

In the 2009-10 campaign with Liverpool, Fernando Torres scored 22 goals in 32 appearances for Liverpool, a very impressive record given the team’s underperformance. However in early April an operation on his troublesome knee ended his league campaign, and this injury appears to have left a cloud hanging over the player ever since.

During Spain’s World Cup winning drive, which Torres impressively fought back to fitness to be a part of, he looked out of sorts, and a player who looked so impressive in Euro 2008, scoring the decisive goal in that final, was dropped for the World Cup final by Vicente del Bosque. It is perhaps a measure of Spain’s quality that they managed to win the World Cup when one of their star players was so clearly off colour.

Torres is a fantastic football player, of that there can be no doubt. His below par performances in the World Cup can be put down to him just returning from injury. Similarly, his poor performances for Liverpool this season may be put down to a lack of motivation and a desire for change. For Fernando Torres that change has now come, and he now plies his trade for a club ‘at the level he is supposed to’ and there can be no more excuses.

Fernando Torres is no doubt a world class striker, and is still only 26 years old, lest we forget, but for Ancelotti and perhaps more tellingly Mr Abramovich himself,