Fernando Torres gave all Chelsea fans reason to believe that he is coming back to life with two calm assists in Chelsea’s Champions League win against Bayer Leverkusen.
Torres, back in the starting line-up, didn’t play at his best but despite at times appearing hesitant on the ball he showed great awareness and ability to set up goals for David Luiz and Juan Mata.
With manager Andre Villas-Boas starting the match with John Terry and Frank Lampard on the bench many wondered how they would cope without two of their most consistent performers.
AVB denied the decision to rest the players was a risk and accused the media of focusing on negatives.
“I don’t see things like that. I think you are trying to look at the negative when there are so many positives. We have a very competitive squad,” he said.
“I would like to emphasise that we have just come from an international week and we played after two days the Sunderland game and two days later we played Champions League against a good team.”
Chelsea domianted for most of the first half with recent signing Raul Meireles making a a solid start to his Chelsea career.
However, Bayer were resolute in defence and it wasn’t until a smart lay-off from Torres allowed Luiz to curl a shot into the bottom corner and open the scoring for Chelsea.
Torres was good on the ball for most of the match but was still lacking his killer instinct, sometimes taking too many touches on the ball before shooting.
A glimpse of the Torres from his Liverpool days was seen when he made an enterprising run down the left side, beating several defenders and drawing the keeper, before he squared it up for another Chelsea new boy, Juan Mata, to tap it in for their second goal.
Torres’ form was much improved from his previous games and it seems that he has reconciled with the club over his comments about teammates being “old and slow”.
“It’s been solved. The investigation is over. We had a chat and the situation is solved,” Villas-Boas said without going into details.
AVB preferred to look ahead to Chelsea’s biggest fixture of the season so far, Sunday’s game against a rampant Manchester United side at Old Trafford.
“Sunday is a different kind of challenge altogether,” Villas-Boas admitted. “We face Man United in perhaps their most tremendous moment, of flair and style.
“It provokes in us a good challenge and motivation will be the key factor for the game.”
By Jack Morrison for Clean Sheets All Round
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