Chelsea’s coaching staff wouldn’t have been tossing and turning at night trying to figure out how to stop Fernando Torres.
At the age of 33 the man from Fuenlabrada is no longer at the peak of his powers.
But, over the course of a 16-year career, he’s built up enough credit to be more than respected and, when it comes to scoring against Chelsea, Torres has previous.
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19 August 2007
Torres came up against Chelsea in the third game of his Liverpool career, having joined from Atletico Madrid in the summer of 2007.
The might of Tal Ben-Haim wasn’t enough to stop the Spaniard, who opened the scoring, only for Frank Lampard to equalise from the spot in a 1-1 draw.
22 April 2008
Remember that weird spell where Chelsea and Liverpool played each other in the Champions League every week?
In the first-leg of a dull affair Ricardo Carvalho and John Terry kept Torres quiet, with the game ending 1-1.
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30 April 2008
Eight days later they did it all again, and this time Torres was able to find the back of the net to cancel out Didier Drogba’s opener and send the game into extra-time.
|But goals from Drogba and Lampard put Chelsea through to the next round, with a Ryan Babel strike proving nothing but a miserable consolation.
1 February 2009
Terry, Mikel and Alex could have changed their last name to Torres given how tightly they stuck to the Spaniard for 88 minutes.
However two goals in the last two minutes gave Liverpool the win in a feisty affair.
8 April 2009
Another year, another Champion League game against Chelsea.
Torres’ sixth minute goal put Liverpool ahead but an unlikely double from Branislav Ivanovic and a second-half goal from Drogba gave Chelsea a commanding first-leg lead…
14 April 2009
…which set up one of the best Champions League games in recent memory.
Chelsea and Liverpool slugged out a 4-4 draw, although Torres didn’t score, in which even Lucas Leiva threw down the shackles to get himself a goal.
4 October 2009
Carvalho and Terry were getting the hang of shutting out Torres, as they did in a 2-0 win for Chelsea.
Fun fact: Ross Turnbull was on Chelsea’s bench. Okay, not that fun.
7 November 2010
A Liverpool side containing Paul Konchesky, Martin Kelly and Raul Meireles beat Chelsea with ease thanks to two goals from Torres.
As fate would have it this was the last time he played against Chelsea for Liverpool. Not a bad way to go out.
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Torres was loaned out to Milan for the first half of the 2015/16 season before re-joining Atletico in 2016.
However tepid his spell in London was there are few strikers in history who can hold a candle to his record of seven goals in eight games against Chelsea.
What are the odds on him getting another one tonight?
