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Like the rest of our players out on loan, Fernando Torres is still technically a Chelsea player. He has 1.5 years left on Chelsea contract, which is not coincidentally coincident with how much he has left on his AC Milan loan contract, too. He does still constitute an FFP hit for Chelsea's books (somewhere in the region of £9-12m/year) and for many, the psychological damage caused by his multitude of missed chances and generally terrible play has still not been completely healed by Diego Costa and company. But in the end, these are minor issues as, for all intents and purposes, and unlike most of our players out on loan, Fernando Torres has no designs of ever playing for Chelsea again. Or vice versa.
Rather hilariously though, if the ever louder rumors out of Italy are to be believed, AC Milan may have already come to a very similar conclusion as well, and much more quickly than it took us.
Liverpool are seriously considering a January move for Fernando Torres. However, they could face competition from Atletico Madrid...
Torres is currently on a two-year loan from Chelsea to AC Milan, but it has been widely reported in Italy that the Serie A side want to end the deal due to the striker's lack of form and goals. He has scored just once in 10 games.
-source: Daily Mail
Torres has only been in Milan for four months but has not played since the end of November, and he's already gone through all Stages of Torres:
- Claim that he's still got something to offer. Build up confidence.
- Claim that HE'S BACK when he scores, like he did in his very first start for Milan.
- Give him chances ahead of better options.
- Ask for patience when his presence is an active detriment to the team on the pitch. He just needs service.
- Give him more chances ahead of better options. He just needs confidence.
- Try to cut losses.
As we know, step #6 wasn't easy for Chelsea. Presumably it won't be easy for Milan either, though the contractual situation may be slightly less unwieldy at this point*. Either way, as long as we don't take pity on him and take him back as some sort of charity, we should be fine. And if he ends up back in Liverpool, it's going to be amazing comedy and I, for one, am all for it. Do it, Brendan, DO IT!
* Can Milan loan a loanee? If they're on the hook for (part of) his wages and we're on the hook for his transfer fee and maybe a small part of his wages, could a third team share the wage burden as well? A straight-up sale (or even a pay-off) would of course get Torres off our books for next year, which would be nice. Do your thing, Christian Purslow!