Torres, signed to spend four years at Chelsea, never reclaimed the quality he showed at Liverpool, netting for the club just eight times in his most productive season before leaving the old Atletico Madrid team after a loan from Milan.
Now, Jamie Carragher opens up saying he wasn’t surprised that Chelsea’s forward Fernando Torres didn’t live up for his £50 m price tag.
“I couldn’t believe it, what I mean was that I knew we were kidding Chelsea,” Carragher revealed on the Sky Sports Off Script show of when was asked how he reacted to the Torres move to Chelsea. He added:
“But we couldn’t imagine that we received £50 m so we actually ended up doing it close in certain respects to purchase Andy Carroll for £35 m. We got out two players for the money where Torres go.”
The Liverpool legend played beside Torres and saw the peaks and pitfalls of the Spaniard at Anfield first-hand.
Chelsea made British transfer records when it recruited Torres in January 2011, but Carragher admits he believed the forward was a shadow of his former self and this appeared to be the reality when he scored just 20 goals in 110 league outings:
“I believe that he was the best striker in the world for 18 months at Anfield. So I guess he’d had such a strong record against Chelsea that it was clearly stuck on the mind of the boss.
“At that time, Chelsea was already a team where the owner was purchasing players he desired. And I think the decision was actually taken by Roman Abramovich.”
