Further Down The Spiral

Someday soon, Stamford Bridge is going to be known as the place where world-class strikers go to become shockingly bad.

It's been over a year since Fernando Torres' record-breaking move to Chelsea and in that time, we've witnessed a truly class striker disintegrate into yet another one of Roman Abramovich's expensive flops.

Perhaps Alan Shearer put it best in his column for The Sun when he said Torres, of late, has avoided placing himself in goal scoring positions for fear of missing them.

"He looks shot and needs a cut-price move away," Shearer added.

All strikers need to score to keep their confidence level up and Torres is no exception but by agreeing to that ridiculously expensive move to Chelsea last January, the Spaniard voluntarily signed up for a world of pressure and expectations.

Very few players have managed to get through the pressure unscathed. Zinedine Zidane was one. And more recently, Cristiano Ronaldo, has certainly lived up to his billing as the most expensive player in the world.

But some players aren't just meant to be record-breaking signings. Just look at Andy Carroll who was brought in to replace Torres. 

And as if things weren't bad enough, the internal turmoil plaguing Chelsea at the moment is set to delay a potential career-reviving return-to-form even further down the road. You almost feel as if Torres is part of some strange reenactment of Andriy Schevchenko's disastrous tenure at Stamford Bridge.

The similarities are uncanny.  Like Torres, Schevchenko arrived at Chelsea on the back of a record-breaking deal and a goal-scoring record most strikers take a lifetime to achieve.

Furthermore, both players were bought by Abramovich and not their respective managers.

Schevchenko, or Sheva as he is fondly known, was forced upon Jose Mourinho and some believe his refusal to give the Ukrainian more time on the pitch cost him his job. In Mourinho's defense, he saw little reason to play a striker who didn't score goals.

Similarly, it is believed that Torres was signed by Chelsea without Carlo Ancelotti's recommendations. Ancelotti, like Mourinho, ended up losing his job not too long after (although in his defense, he gave Torres more game time than Mourinho ever did with Sheva). 

If anything comes from this, one hopes that billionaire owners stay out of the transfer business and just let their managers make the decisions. In fact, it's time they stop meddling and treating their football clubs like they would in a fantasy football league.