Was fifty million well spent on Torres?
When Rafa Benitez paid between twenty and twenty five million pounds for a player that scored an average of one goal every three games it was seen by many as a huge gamble. For Liverpool football club it was a great investment. The former Liverpool boss must have seen something in the Atletico Madrid forward to pay that much and his judgement was spot on.
In his first season in English football he played forty six games in all competitions and made himself a crowd favourite by scoring thirty three goals; the transfer fee looked to be money well spent. It was to be his best season for the Anfield club.
Four years and one hundred and two appearences later, in which he scored sixty five goals for the club, he was on the move to free spending London giants Chelsea for a fee of fifty million pounds!
It took him an amazing nine hundred and three minutes to score his first goal for Roman Abramovich's side; for a player that was brought in to score goals it was a lot of pressure to say the least! It was to prove his only goal in eighteen outings for his new club.
In his second season he still found goals hard to come by but the price the club paid for him meant he started nearly every game; who leaves a fifty million pound player on the bench?
In April two thousand and twelve he scored his first hat trick for the blues against near neighbours Queens Park Rangers in a six goals to one victory.
The Stamford Bridge club got all the way to the Champions League Final and the Spaniard came on as a second half substitute against Bayern Munich. The game went to penalties which the English side won. He added it to his World Cup and European Championship winning medals but his goal tally was still low. Torres played forty nine games; he scored eleven goals. Questions were still being asked about his price tag.
Last season he looked to be returning to his old ways; he played sixty four games scoring twenty two goals. That was the same ratio as he scored in Spain before moving to Anfield.
At the age of twenty nine he is in the prime of his life and also looks like he's enjoying his football again.
A very important factor with Torres, as is the case with most footballers but espeacially strikers, is confidence. The return of 'The special one' can make or break the fifty million pound man.
Mourinho, with bags of experience at handling football superstars, can only be good for the player that Roman Abramovich brought in to do one thing; stick the ball in the back of the net!
It should be a partnership made in heaven but we all know how things can change in football.
I can see this being a great season for the man that has worn the Spanish jersey just over one hundred times.
Was it fifty million well spent? I think the jury is still out on this one.
Written by Paul Moore, a football fan.