Felice Calabro’/AP/Press Association Images
Torres moved out of a messy situation at Liverpool and into a equally shambolic one at Chelsea. Despite winning the Premier League the year before, Carlo Ancelotti had been struggling to get consistent performances out of his players ever since the sudden and unexplained dismissal of his assistant, Ray Wilkins, the past November. Wilkins was a Chelsea man through and through, providing Ancelotti with a middle man of sorts between his European coaching style and the fire-in-the-blood traditions so beloved in English football. The previously steadfast unity between the players seemed to take a sudden and powerful hit, resulting in a dreadful run of results that saw the club go right to the end of the year without a win, finally brought to an end on December 29th by a somewhat scrappy 1-0 victory over Bolton.
Despite recovering morale enough to guide the team to 2nd place in the league, Ancelotti was fired at the end of the season, leaving Torres once again facing uncertainty at a time when pre-season should have been a time for him to finally settle into the club and adapt himself to its methods. The incoming Andre Villas-Boas, whom the board hoped would be a new Mourinho after his outstanding success at Porto, proved a complete disaster, showing inept man-management skills and struggling to implement an attacking strategy which saw the team’s high defensive line continually ripped open.
When he was fired and assistant Roberto Di Matteo was promoted to first team coach, Torres found himself playing under his third manager in barely over a year at the club. Di Matteo reinstated the club’s veterans to the side, whose experience led the team to their first ever Champions League victory but also saw Torres come under increasing criticism for his inability to find the net.
Di Matteo too was sacked early the following season, being replaced by Rafael Benitez on an interim basis. While the former Liverpool manager was brought in to help Torres get back to his best form, which one could argue he did given the striker’s final haul of 22 goals that season (albeit with only 8 coming in the league), the damage was too deeply ingrained and Demba Ba was signed in the January transfer window to bolster the club’s attacking options
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