Milan move is best option for Torres
SO Fernando Torres’s time in English football is over and I am glad he is heading to AC Milan. I have said in these pages before that I don’t like to see players who are on big contracts sitting on the bench and hopefully a move to the San Siro will revive his confidence. When Torres joined us at Liverpool in 2007, he was in the top four strikers in world football. Big, strong and quick, he used to leave defenders trailing and his goal return was magnificent. It was a joy to be on the same team as him during that period and what really impressed me about him was his character. He would stand up to defenders and was never someone who could be bullied out of a game. He could give as good as he got. The Torres who joined Chelsea in January 2011, though, was not the same forward who arrived from Atletico Madrid and we had seen the deterioration in him over his final 18 months at Anfield. He suffered some knee and hamstring injuries and when explosive players like him are hindered by such problems, it is difficult to recapture the spark. So much of Fernando’s game was based on his pace and he found himself unable to race away from defenders as he used to. People wondered why he couldn’t do for Chelsea what he had initially done for Liverpool but we were never surprised. If anything, we were pleased with the £50million transfer fee we received for him, even if we didn’t reinvest it properly. Torres might not have scaled the heights that were expected of him in London but he still leaves with a collection of some of the game’s biggest medals. It will be interesting to see if a switch to Italy revives his goalscoring talent.