Jamie Carragher reckons Liverpool knew what they were doing when they managed to get £50m for Fernando Torres – a player our former defender reckons was already on the way down due to injuries.
The sale to the Blues was a monumental one at the time, and with the money, we signed Andy Carroll and Luis Suarez. While the former was a flop, the Uruguayan was jaw-droppingly good and went to eclipse Torres’s Anfield Achievements.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Carragher told Sky Sports – via The Daily Star:
“I knew we had kidded Chelsea. Those last 12 months, he was a shadow of his former self.
“For 18 months at Liverpool, he was the best striker in the world, and I think he had such a good record against Chelsea that obviously stuck in the owner’s mind.
“Chelsea at that stage, I think the owner was still buying players who he wanted, Shevchenko was another case.
“What happened that was fortunate for Liverpool, that season we played Chelsea, and we weren’t having a great season and Torres was having a really poor time but he scored two against Chelsea.
“I think the decision was made then – as soon as January comes, we are going for Fernando Torres. £50m was major money at that stage and we were all in a state of shock, we could not believe we had got £50m.
“We ended up doing something similar ourselves in buying Andy Carroll for £35m, but we did get Luis Suarez out of it. I was not surprised at all that it didn’t go well.”
Interestingly, Torres actually played 30 more games for Chelsea than he ever did for Liverpool, although scored 36 less goals!
The Spaniard went on to play for AC Milan, before returning to Atletico Madrid and finishing his career in Japan.
At Liverpool, his best season scoring him score 24 Premier League goals, but in the following 15 seasons, he only hit double figures in the league one three occasions – two of those were for us anyway.
Carra was right to suggest that as his peak, Torres was insane – but it simply didn’t last very long.