Chelsea’s Fernando Torres finally breaks goal drought in FA Cup win over Leicester
“Fernando Torres, he scores when he wants,’’ sang the Chelsea fans after 67 minutes, borrowing Arsenal’s paean to the prolific Robin van Persie. It had been 25 hours and 40 minutes since Torres last scored, a barren stretch of Kalahari proportions.
Not since Oct 19 against Genk had Torres found the mark for Chelsea. Winter had come and gone. The trees had shed and regained their leaves. Even the protesters had come and gone outside St Paul’s. Torres was risking rivalling “The Mousetrap’’ for London runs. Then, like London buses, two goals came along at once and the blond-streaked Spaniard was smiling again.
Fittingly, the audience for Torres’s return to the scoring charts was an all-star sporting cast including Boris Becker, Peter Schmeichel, Gary Lineker and Stuart Pearce. Ashley Cole, who was rested in advance of Wednesday’s game at Manchester City, looked on, resplendent in a smart jacket over a James Dean T-shirt.
They will be selling “I was there”T-shirts here next, celebrating Torres’s goals. “I needed those goals,” Chelsea’s No 9 said. “I’d been working so hard to get those goals and in the last month the team is much better than before. We are more committed and I think we have shown in the last two or three games that we can do things in a good way. I’m feeling much better. I was playing good but I wasn’t scoring goals. But I found the net today so it’s a good day for me. I feel happy.”