Player Focus: Fernando Torres (Chelsea)

Twenty-three minutes after coming off the bench for Chelsea in the second-leg of their last 16 tie in the Champions League against Napoli earlier this week, Fernando Torres surpassed a rather undesirable milestone – he had reached 24 hours on the pitch since his last goal in a Chelsea shirt. By the end of extra time he had reached precisely 1474 minutes without a goal. Jokes were flying about that Chelsea were mightily relieved that the chance from which the winning goal was scored fell to their right-back rather than their £50million signing, but in reality, the Spaniard really is the laughing stock of the Premier League at the moment. WhoScored.com have thus decided to try and ascertain what exactly is going wrong for El Niño, taking note of his stats over the past 3 seasons to see if anything has changed in his game.

Chelsea

On first glance, a fair few of Torres’ stats this season seem particularly woeful. His 2 goals and 3 assists in 22 Premier League appearances appear to speak for themselves. Furthermore, he has made just 0.9 key passes per game and had 2.0 shots per game, respectively the 9th and 5th best in the Chelsea squad. He has also only averaged 28.5 touches of the ball per appearance this season and made 17.5 passes per game at a pass success rate of 74.9%.

However, what is probably most alien to Torres this season is the fact that he is making more appearances from the bench than he will have been used to in previous years. Having had 9 of his 22 Premier League run-outs this season as a substitute, he has had to try and make an impact on games when he is getting as little as 10 or 15 minutes on the pitch. In 15 substitute appearances in the Premier League since joining Chelsea, only once – against West Ham last season – has Torres found the net. With this taken into account, and the fact that he was used to playing the full 90 minutes while at Liverpool, it is possibly more beneficial to look at how Torres’ fares ‘per 90 minutes’ (summarised in the table below).

Some players prosper when given a run out from the bench, but Torres is clearly not one of them. His rate of 3.3 shots per 90 minutes is only behind Drogba and Sturridge in the Chelsea squad, and one cannot help thinking that the inconsistency that naturally comes with making lots of appearances from the bench may play a part in this, while Drogba and Sturridge have made significantly fewer sub appearances. However, the Spaniard’s chance conversion rate of just 4.4% is something that cannot be defended and has to be improved. He had almost identical stats in his first 6 months at Chelsea, with his chance conversion rate only marginally higher, at 4.5%. There is an argument to say that any improvement could come with an extended run in the first team, like he was given in his time at Liverpool, where the team was built around him and Gerrard.

Liverpool

In his final half-season at Anfield, Torres started 22 league games and came off the bench just once, scoring 9 goals in the process. He was averaging 3.9 shots per game, scoring over twice as high a proportion of his chances, with a chance conversion rate of 10.1%. He averaged exactly 1 key pass per game, and picked up just 2 assists, showing that this aspect of his game has not changed notably and he has not sacrificed his goalscoring threat in order to set up teammates.

What is notable, though, is that he was having more touches per 90 minutes in this period at Liverpool (44.2) than he has been this season at Chelsea, and yet he attempted considerably fewer passes per 90 minutes for the Merseyside club (21.0). Coupled with his much-improved shots per 90 minutes rate of 4.2 at Liverpool, these stats go a long way to proving that Torres was finding much more dangerous positions and possibly even doing what good strikers often do, and being overly selfish in attacking areas of the pitch.

His pass success was also much lower in that final half-season at Liverpool, averaging as little as 65% accuracy, which, rather than highlighting that Chelsea have improved his game in that regard, merely shows that Torres’ lack of confidence has spread to his passing game, and he is attempting less adventurous passes at Stamford Bridge in order to avoid the wrath of an irate crowd at seeing their expensive striker give the ball away.

Going back one season further yields more painful reading for Chelsea fans. In his 20 starts and 2 sub appearances in an injury-hit 2009/10 season for the Spaniard, Torres scored 18 goals at an incredible chance conversion rate of 22.5%. Yet again he averaged 1.0 key passes per game and picked up just 3 assists, as well as 4.2 shots per 90 minutes. He also had 40.9 touches per 90 minutes and yet made just 17.2 passes in the same time.

In the 2009/10 season, as well, Torres had more touches of the ball and attempted fewer passes than he has done in his time at Chelsea. He had an eye for goal then and an arrogance that deadly strikers need, and while it seems like an obvious statement that he is lacking in confidence, he needs to be encouraged to be more selfish.

It is not often that a greater number of passes and an improved pass accuracy can be seen as a downside to someone’s game, but in the case of Fernando Torres, it has adverse effects. He has been getting on the ball in the wrong positions for Chelsea this season and as a result makes more passes but has been getting fewer chances to score. He obviously needs to regain his confidence, but a longer run in the team could bring about the desired results for the currently flailing Fernando Torres.