Is Fernando Torres Russia-Bound? Common Sense Says No

The rumour has been been going around for a couple of days now that Russian outfit Anzhi Makhachkala (it worries me a wee bit that I can spell that without looking it up) are interested in a certain Fernando Torres. Since the media is temporarily done with branding him as a flop after three recent good performances, they're moving on to transfer rumours. I guess that's preferable, because it means Torres isn't ungodly bad right now, but it's still kind of annoying.

So the hot rumour is that Anzhi, who have silly money are preparing a €45M bid to bring Torres to Russia. That would mean that Chelsea recoup the vast majority of the transfer fee they paid Liverpool in January of last year as well as getting his wages off the books. If Anzhi do offer that sort of money, the Blues would be monumentally insane not to take it.

The problem? It's almost certainly not going to happen.

Here are the reasons Anzhi should not buy Fernando Torres for €45M

• The transfer fee is absurd.
• Torres' wages are even more absurd.
• Anzhi already have Samuel Eto'o, whom they are paying absurd money.
• Torres hasn't actually demonstrated that he's very good. He has, in fact, mostly demonstrated that he is now absurdly bad.
  

Here is the reasons Anzhi might buy Torres:

• They're lunatics with lots of money.

Seriously. That's the only reason this 'deal' makes sense. It's as though the papers looked around for a club with a habit of spending absolutely crazy money and found a way to plausibly (ish) link Torres to a move away from Stamford Bridge. But there's no real reason for anyone to want to acquire a player for something line €30M over market price, and there's neither a pressing need he could fill at Anzhi nor is there competition from other teams driving up the cost.

At €45M for Torres I'd take that offer so fast I'd have to invent time travel. The economics of that deal would be so skewed in Chelsea's favour that the club would have to sink to whole new levels of complete bug[fun] insanity in order to find a reason to turn it down. Unfortunately, said offer seems to me about as likely as Juan Mata killing a charging elephant using only his teeth.