My "Favourite" Premier League Manager Rafa Benitez made a comment after Chelsea's 2-1 win against Arsenal, he said "These people who like to quote stats and stats, they don't have any clue about what is going on,". That is like a stab in the back to me, he was saying that in regards to Fernando Torres, he followed that up with "When you have one striker for a month and a half and cannot change, it's more difficult for the striker. When you have now two strikers, you can manage." I am one of those people who uses statistics to analysis football because once it is put into context it can give an accurate reflection of a player's or a team's performance and now I am going to do what Rafa hates and show that Torres has been under performing by a career standards but by his Chelsea's standard's this is nothing to fret over.
As BBC Sport stated, Torres scored his 14th Premier League goal for Chelsea in the 8-0 win over Aston Villa in December, 22 months after joining the club, it took just six months to pass that mark for Liverpool. He has played 69 league games, 18 from the bench, for Chelsea and he had played 23 games, 2 from the bench, for Liverpool when he reached 15 goals. If we broaden this to all competitions he has scored 26 goals in 103, 25 from the bench, games for Chelsea and it took him 38, 3 from the bench, games to get to that number while at Liverpool.
Here too be subjective we have to look at the teams he was playing in and the players he was playing with. Based on the number of minutes played in the 2007-08 season the Liverpool XI would be Reina, Finnan, Carragher, Hyypia, Arbeloa, Kuyt, Mascherano, Alonso, Riise, Gerrard and Torres with bench contributions from Crouch, Babel, Benayoun and Voronin. So on the whole a good team if you compare that to last season Chelsea team Čech, Ivanović, Luiz, Terry, Cole, Meireles, Ramires, Lampard, Sturridge, Torres, Mata with bench contributions from Drogba, Malouda, Obi Mikel and Bosingwa. These teams are both good and it would take a lot more time to full compare these teams but they are both good enough to to supply a front man with a lot of opportunities.
So comparing his stint at Chelsea you can clearly see that he isn't performing to the same level as he was at Liverpool but a Chelsea shouldn't expect him to hit those highs again, all they can hope for is a 25+ goals in all competitions a season from him. He hasn't scored in the last 8 games if you include the substitute appearance against Southampton in the FA Cup his longest barren span since his 30 games without a goal between 26/10/11 and 18/04/12. But before this poor run he had scored 7 goals in 6 games his best ever run of form for Chelsea.
Now lets look at the other statement about it being hard for Torres as the only striker, when he was vying with Drogba for the lone role up front he only scored 7 goals in 48 games and since he has been the only Striker he has scored 7 in 23. He has been the lone man for Chelsea all of this season and not just a month an a half and has looked better this season than before. Although I believe the addition of Demba Ba will help Chelsea this season I think this will send Torres back to his performances of the last two seasons.
So the conclusion, Torres has been playing better but Ba will slow him down again and Benitez is an Idiot.
Trivia Questions 8
Q: Which Premier League season was the only season where none of the top 10 goal scores where English?
Trivia Questions 7
Q: Who played the first "Golden Set" in female grand slam history at Wimbledon last year?
A: Yaroslava Shvedova
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