Torres mega-thread

[El Rojo]

Torres was brilliant for us over those first few years. When the going got tough for the club, I agree that he downed tools to a degree. I’d accuse Reina of the same. 
 

You just don’t see that in the Klopp era, thankfully. Time will tell whether it’s doing a proper due diligence on the personality of players, the influence of Klopp or a combination of these.

 

[3 Stacks]

Torres exploded around the time when I started really supporting the club and watching the matches and so I didn't have much context in terms of club football. Before that, I mostly just watched the big International competitions.

 

I didn't much care when he left but looking back it's pretty similar to Coutinho, where they were very good with us and caught heaters so to speak, they both had ideas above their stations so decided to force a departure, and then they were exposed a bit as not being top, top players.

[Ron B]

10 minutes ago, El Rojo said:

Torres was brilliant for us over those first few years. When the going got tough for the club, I agree that he downed tools to a degree. I’d accuse Reina of the same. 
 

You just don’t see that in the Klopp era, thankfully. Time will tell whether it’s doing a proper due diligence on the personality of players, the influence of Klopp or a combination of these.

 

There’s been a few instances where Klopp has maybe seemed a bit too loyal to certain players (allowing Albert Moron to act the prick with his t-shirt tribute to that wanker Reyes, holding onto Degsy and Ox when they weren’t doing it anymore, not making any appreciable effort to bin Naby when he clearly wasn’t going to come good and Lallana when he was evidently made of matchsticks). 
But the pay-off to that has been the players being incredibly loyal to him, and he’s never persevered with anyone to the point where it’s affected us on the pitch. 
I love Rafa, but I’m not sure any players had boundless personal loyalty to him. I’ve also got personal reasons to rate Rodgers as a man, but I suspect one or two players thought he was a bit of a wally by the end. 
 

[Barrington Womble]

4 hours ago, El Rojo said:

Torres was brilliant for us over those first few years. When the going got tough for the club, I agree that he downed tools to a degree. I’d accuse Reina of the same. 
 

You just don’t see that in the Klopp era, thankfully. Time will tell whether it’s doing a proper due diligence on the personality of players, the influence of Klopp or a combination of these.

 

 

Torres left his hometown club to come here and win stuff, with the promise from H&G to spend big and push the club forward. And almost instantly the whole club went to shit. I'm sure Torres wouldn't have downed tools had the club delivered on it's promise. Instead he'd seen us sell the likes of arbeloa, mascherano and Alonso in a 12 months period. I'm not saying he was right to downtools, but it just can't be compared to what is happening at the club now. 

[Red_or_Dead]

Him leaving was fucking gut-wrenching at the time.  We'd got rid of the cowboys, the fucking owl had been binned off and Kenny was back in charge.  It felt good going to the game again - some of Rafa's last season was dire and toxic, followed up with the dross that Hodgson put out.  We started playing better, then boom, Torres fucks off, to those horrible cunts..  Fuck him.  Good song mind...

 

 

[Code]

We had just got rid of Hodgson and got Dalglish back, Torres leaving hardly registered for me. 

[Leyton388]

7 hours ago, Ron B said:

There’s been a few instances where Klopp has maybe seemed a bit too loyal to certain players (allowing Albert Moron to act the prick with his t-shirt tribute to that wanker Reyes, holding onto Degsy and Ox when they weren’t doing it anymore, not making any appreciable effort to bin Naby when he clearly wasn’t going to come good and Lallana when he was evidently made of matchsticks). 
But the pay-off to that has been the players being incredibly loyal to him, and he’s never persevered with anyone to the point where it’s affected us on the pitch. 
I love Rafa, but I’m not sure any players had boundless personal loyalty to him. I’ve also got personal reasons to rate Rodgers as a man, but I suspect one or two players thought he was a bit of a wally by the end. 
 

 

Absolutely ruined the CL lift celebration and all pictures of it.

[Bjornebye]

18 hours ago, Leyton388 said:

 

Absolutely ruined the CL lift celebration and all pictures of it.

Josemi did the same in 05 the bastard 

[Ron B]

16 hours ago, Bjornebye said:

Josemi did the same in 05 the bastard 

Haha, Josemi made it about himself; Moron made it about some twat who had nothing to do with LFC and who had died as a result of driving like a prick. 
I see pictures of Moron celebrating and it pisses me off. I see pictures of Josemi celebrating and can’t remember who he is until I laugh while recalling that he was so bad we swapped him for Jan Kromkamp. 

[Arniepie]

On 25/03/2024 at 21:14, Mil-ing Around said:

 

He definitely downed tools. Carragher has said it in multiple interviews and I think Gerrard mentioned it too. He wasn't trying or making as many runs and he was visibly moaning a lot more near the end. 

 

He could have just been calling Hodgson a cunt though

Ironically his best performance was against chelsea

[Reckoner]

On 26/03/2024 at 22:03, Leyton388 said:

 

Absolutely ruined the CL lift celebration and all pictures of it.

Yeah ruined the whole year for me. What the fuck are you all talking about?

[Jose Jones]

On 27/03/2024 at 00:56, 3 Stacks said:

Torres exploded around the time when I started really supporting the club and watching the matches and so I didn't have much context in terms of club football. Before that, I mostly just watched the big International competitions.

 

I didn't much care when he left but looking back it's pretty similar to Coutinho, where they were very good with us and caught heaters so to speak, they both had ideas above their stations so decided to force a departure, and then they were exposed a bit as not being top, top players.

Mate, Torres was the best striker in the world for 2 or 3 seasons. He won the World Cup and scored the winner in the final of the Europeans. He was a level above Coutinho.

[Jairzinho]

On 26/03/2024 at 13:49, El Rojo said:

Torres was brilliant for us over those first few years. When the going got tough for the club, I agree that he downed tools to a degree. I’d accuse Reina of the same. 
 

You just don’t see that in the Klopp era, thankfully. Time will tell whether it’s doing a proper due diligence on the personality of players, the influence of Klopp or a combination of these.

 

 

Other players just fucked off instead. Find it hard to give much of a shit about the fact they did, to be honest. We were owned by a pair of snake oil salesmen and we were managed by Hodgson. 

[Jairzinho]

On 26/03/2024 at 13:56, 3 Stacks said:

Torres exploded around the time when I started really supporting the club and watching the matches and so I didn't have much context in terms of club football. Before that, I mostly just watched the big International competitions.

 

I didn't much care when he left but looking back it's pretty similar to Coutinho, where they were very good with us and caught heaters so to speak, they both had ideas above their stations so decided to force a departure, and then they were exposed a bit as not being top, top players.

 

Maybe your worst ever take. He was leading the line for Atletico at 18, and by 22/23 was one of the best around.

 

A prime Torres now would be the best striker in the world. 

[Code]

24 minutes ago, Jose Jones said:

Mate, Torres was the best striker in the world for 2 or 3 seasons. He won the World Cup and scored the winner in the final of the Europeans. He was a level above Coutinho.

David Villa was the best striker in that Spain team though. 

[3 Stacks]

42 minutes ago, Jairzinho said:

 

Maybe your worst ever take. He was leading the line for Atletico at 18, and by 22/23 was one of the best around.

 

A prime Torres now would be the best striker in the world. 

Where would you rank him over a career, not prime, in terms of strikers of his era?

[Antynwa]

Torres is a good example of time healing old wounds. At least when it comes to the person. 

 

I was devasted when he left, the key image for me was when he had the Liverpool scarf wrapped around his arm when he lifted the world cup. Call it good PR, but it did feel like he was another foreign player who got what it meant to play for the club.

 

Simon Hughes wrote a book a few years ago where he interviewed players from that era including Torres, and notwithstanding what he won with Chelsea, I have always felt with Torres and it came across in that book there is a tinge of regret for leaving the way he did.

 

I'm delighted that he can come back to the club and be treated warmly, I sort of wish the same happened with Owen because he actually won stuff with us regardless of his move to United, but that's just my personal opinion.

 

Torres at his peak was excellent, but call it recency bias but there are a few players I'd have ahead of him, including Sturridge. 

[Bjornebye]

1 hour ago, Code said:

David Villa was the best striker in that Spain team though. 

Villa wouldn’t have been as good as Torres here 

[Jairzinho]

1 hour ago, 3 Stacks said:

Where would you rank him over a career, not prime, in terms of strikers of his era?

 

Slightly difficult to judge because prior to fucking off to Chelsea he basically stayed at Atletico, and maybe even us, possibly longer than he "needed to". The fact he played for Atletico also ruled out Real Madrid as an option. He could have won more and hit some higher numbers personally if he'd "managed" his career better. It probably made the move to Chelsea that much harder to stomach as it seemed to completely fly in the face of the emotion of the rest of his career up until that point. He wasn't getting this anywhere else -

 

 

I also think that while his drop off at Chelsea was so surprisingly steep, that type of striker always tends to have a shorter career at the absolute highest level. He was a seven furlong race horse. Once the explosive pace had gone to some extent he was never going to have a David Villa-esque early 30s.

 

Who would his late 00s rivals be? Zlatan, Eto'o, Villa, Shevchenko, and Drogba? Something like that? Shevchenko had taken the Chelsea retirement fund a few years earlier. Obviously top class for the first half of the 2000s at Milan. Zlatan went from team to team managing his career perfectly to ensure he won the league every year. Villa was phenomenal at Valencia, and then his style meant he could prolong the career well at Barcelona and then Atletico, I think he'd have struggled somewhat in late 2000s Premier League footbal. Eto'o was great at Barca but he'd already fucked off to Russia by 30, possibly the most similar to Torres in that he was never going to be the same player beyond that age due to his style of play. Drogba was perfect for England, but his numbers weren't amazing.

 

For me, Villa from 2005-2011 was probably the best but he never had the spellbinding aura that Torres had for about 18-24 months, and I think that was probably to be expected when you analyse them technically as footballers.

[Code]

1 hour ago, Bjornebye said:

Villa wouldn’t have been as good as Torres here 

Dont know about that. 
 

Here are the stats from Spain.

 

 

[Mook]

2 hours ago, Jairzinho said:

 

Maybe your worst ever take. He was leading the line for Atletico at 18, and by 22/23 was one of the best around.

 

A prime Torres now would be the best striker in the world. 

 

He was the best striker in the World from about 2007-09. Absolutely no question in my mind.

[Code]

[Pidge]

On 26/03/2024 at 14:06, Ron B said:

There’s been a few instances where Klopp has maybe seemed a bit too loyal to certain players (allowing Albert Moron to act the prick with his t-shirt tribute to that wanker Reyes,
 

What?

 

He died that day, he was a senior player at Sevilla at the time Moreno first stepped up into first team football. You think Klopp should have told a grieving player to knock it on the head... really?

[Strontium]

Context is everything. Torres was not a happy player, and, some would argue, with very good reason. He wanted to leave pretty much from the start of the 2010/11 season. We had just appointed Roy fucking Hodgson to replace Rafa, and we'd also sold one of his best friends, Yossi Benayoun, to Chelsea. The club was in turmoil off the pitch, and on it, we had made a slew of disastrously bad signings (I won't sully this thread by even mentioning their names). Benayoun was telling friends in the October and maybe earllier that Torres wanted to join him at Chelsea who, lest we forget, were the reigning champions, and in light of the complete and utter shitshow we had become, I don't blame anyone for having their head turned.

[Kevin D]

On 24/03/2024 at 12:55, dave u said:

I'm a pretty forgiving type I think, so I can get past the whole joining Chelsea thing. Other players have done similar when we've been shit (and even when we've been good) and I've forgiven all of them. So Torres going to Chelsea no longer causes me to bear any grudge.

 

I can't get past the whole "not giving a flying fuck and putting no effort in for six months before leaving" thing though. In fact, it may have been longer than six months, but whatever, he was absolutely not putting in a shift for a long time before he left and therefore he can get to fuck as far as I'm concerned.

 

Owen, Suarez, Alonso, even Mascherano and Coutinho (who refused to play / feigned injury while they tried to force through a move), I can get past all of that because whenever they played they gave their all. There was no downing tools, so I still have respect and - in most cases - affection for them. 

 

When I think of Torres though, I don't think of the goals he scored. I think of him petulantly refusing to chase a ball played down the channel by Carragher in the early stages of a Goodison derby when we were under the cosh. And I think of him coming on against Arsenal for the last ten minutes for an exhausted Ngog who had ran himself to a standstill because we'd been playing with ten men since half time. I remember Torres came on and was walking about while Arsenal players passed it round him. 

 

I also remember the one time he looked like Torres during that spell was when Chelsea came to town and he was auditioning for a job. So yeah, that's what I remember about Torres, so he can fuck off with all of this "oh I love the Reds me" shite. 

Correct.

 

All this enlightened “there’s nothing wrong with your favourite player fucking off to join a set of cunts, it is actually good” nonsense is pissing me right off.