An A-Z of Liverpool F.C., Part 11

T, U, V

T

Torres

Has Liverpool ever had a more exciting striker at Liverpool than the swashbuckling, careering, streaked blond Spanish bombshell Fernando Torres, who finished with power and aplomb, became a bona fide Kop hero.

“We’re gonna bounce in a minute!”

Equally, his departure to the rouble-rich Chelsea in January 2011 for the massive sum of £50m, in the aftermath of Benitez’s departure and the courtoom and ownership sagas, left a bitter taste. On the last day of that January window Torres was still at Liverpool in the morning, but by evening was in London signing for the hated defending champions. It triggered the remarkable signing of Andy Carroll for an equally staggering fee of only £15m less than Torres’, following the less heralded but much more significant signing of Luis Suarez.

Incidentally, the prospect of Suarez and Torres playing together is enough to send any Liverpool supporter into wild-eyed euphoria.

Plenty was known about Torres’ goalscoring prowess at his home town club Atletico Madrid. His arrival from Atletico in summer 2007 for a club record yet what turned out to be a meagre £20.2m was one to excite Liverpool fans - but they had no idea yet just how much. They would soon run out of superlatives.

He announced himself to them with a beautifully-taken and signature goal against Chelsea, dropping his shoulder and easing past a defender before placing his shot immaculately into the far corner. His strike against Sunderland in February 2007 started a run of eight successive home League games in which he scored 12 goals, including successive hat-tricks against Middlesbrough and West Ham United as well as the winner in his first Merseyside derby. In scoring at White Hart Lane on the final day of the League season, Torres overtook a record previously held by Ruud van Nistelrooy for the most number of League goals scored by a non-British player during his debut season in England's top division.

The follow up wasn’t quite so good, as Liverpool's "Number Nine" was hampered by a succession of niggling injuries. He stepped up in the second half of the season though, and scored that goal at Old Trafford when he stalked Vidic like a big cat would a hapless stranded wildebeest. The title was on, but unfortunately in the end Utd prevailed, with a little help from Howard Webb.

Quite the start - there was nobody we would rather have had up front, and that included United’s glittering array of Rooney, Ronaldo, Tevez and Berbatov. Normal goalscoring service was resumed in 2009/10, with 18 from 22 matches, as Torres became the fastest Liverpool player ever to reach 50 League goals, before injury problems resurfaced in 2010/11.

Torres felt Liverpool has misled him, and certainly that new manager Roy Hodgson was misusing him. “Like using a Ferrari to plough a field” it was said, unkindly but not inaccurately. Torres was certainly very unhappy during his last days in the red shirt.

As it was, his scoring record of 81 goals in 142 games for Liverpool is quite remarkable, with a staggering 69% of them resulting from defence-splitting passes, in most instances from Xabi Alonso and more often, Steven Gerrard, with whom Torres shared an almost telepathic football understanding, something which Torres acknowledged after his retirement from playing, when he named Gerrard as the best teammate of his career:

“I always say the best player I played with is Steven Gerrard. He was the player who completed my game. I think my level got into a different dimension when I was on the pitch with him. It was an amazing three-and-a-half years playing alongside Steven and I would love to go back to those days - even for one minute."

2 Thompsons

Peter

One of the stars of Bill Shankly’s 1960s great side, Peter Thompson later attracted this typically understated tribute from the manager:

“I have no hesitation in placing Peter up among the all-time greats – alongside such players as Tom Finney, Stanley Matthews and George Best. They say he didn’t score enough goals, they said his final pass wasn’t telling enough. Well, if he had scored goals as well as everything else he did, he would have been in the same category as Jesus Christ!"

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