FanPost

Torres nullified - Worrying signs?

As Chelsea fans, we all know the controversy that's surrounded our No.9 since his arrival at our club. Basically, some of our fans have faith that he'll return to the star from the Liverpool/Atletico days, some think we should sell him, and the rest are sitting on the fence.

For most of his Blue career, Torres has had to live in the shadow of Drogba, something that didn't help advance his career at all. However, towards the end of last season and so far this season, he seems to have adapted and there has been a slight increase in form, and with Nando as our main striker now, he had to perform, and with 3 goals in his 4 domestic games so far, the signs haven't been all too bad.

However, last night there was a huge difference to what we've seen so far. Anyone who's watched Torres play knows that his strength is his pace off the line, and his favourite play is the through ball behind the line to put him one-on-one with the keeper (Euro final, Barca goal, the miss against Utd, etc...).
Atletico Madrid play with a very compressed defence and like to put 8 men behind the ball, similar to what we were doing at the back end of last season. Their defensive line stood solid deep in their own half, hardly venturing forward to support their attack or contemplate an offside trap. While we were very much off the pace last night in terms of our passing in the opposition half, we didn't have many options/chances to use our striker, because Torres isn't big enough or skilful enough to get past defenders on his own, he needs service from his midfield, with balls through the back.

Atletico's defense was stationed deep in their half, so any through passes attempted from our midfielders were either picked up by Courtois, or dribbled out. Is it a worry, that when we play a team with a deep-lying defensive line, we seem to lack options? Will teams in the EPL try to target this weakness in our attack? Are we lacking another striker? Interested to hear other opinions...

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