Torres’ weird, deluded logic

FERNANDO TORRES, Liverpool, aged 25 and a half: “I identify with the values that define the club. Hard work, struggle, humility, sacrifice, commitment, unity, faith, the permanent desire to improve and to overcome all obstacles.”

Fernando Torres, Chelsea, aged 26 and three quarters: “I think (the new owners) have great ambition and they are doing the right things to get back but it will take time and I did not have that time.”

Once you’ve stopped giggling at that stupefying, self-deluding tautologous tripe in paragraph one, wouldn’t it be intriguing to take a sly peep at the secret diary of a man clearly in his dotage and discover what goes on in that ultra-dyed planet of a head?

For now we must endure the grotesque rationalisation of someone who knows he’s in the wrong. A snide quip like “from one day to another people can love you or hate you” makes you shudder with disbelief.

Yes, because we are the people who have completely changed. “I never kissed the badge”, eh? You did everything but. I’m not taking this well am I! By Friday everyone adopted too cool for school poses and pretended they weren’t the least perturbed.

I had to laugh at one Chelsea cybergeek who wrote a hefty doctrine on why Liverpudlians just get too peevish about everything. It must have taken him ages. “Am I bovvered?” would have sufficed.

Our own fans were trying to move on, telling the world what’s done is done and Kenny was the main man anyway. Which is true of course and always was, yet even at 51 I become exasperated by this collective shrug.

Get real, you’re told. What, that this God-like status and obscene wealth is funded by fans heading for the poorhouse in a bleak financial climate? So when they up sticks we’re supposed to just say ho hum?

Said it before; the day football supporters “get real” is the day we’re all looking for a new career.

Chelsea are none of my business but it cannot be ignored; his destination was 80% of the issue, and not because of a few cup ties in the Noughties.

If one uses a word like ‘despise’ it’s impossible to clamber back to nonchalance. You need the elasticity of a Spanish forward for that, but it’s hard to understand the move from any angle. That side has problems of its own. Packed with players over 30, the nucleus has been there 7 years, never mind an increasingly meddlesome owner.

I’ve never seen a manager handed 70 million’s worth of players and look so damned miserable. He now has to choose between the 3 biggest lip-trippers in football.

Eight years and a substantial wedge later, Abramovich still cannot claim the Champions League or one ounce of the love and respect afforded to a Barcelona, United or (yes) Liverpool.

Their whole ethos was summed up by the Torres banner which merely duplicated a Liverpool one and painted it blue — forgetting to remove the small but distinct drawing of the Shankly Gates! How ironic their one claim to world renown and gravitas was the manager Abramovich summarily sacked after one bad month. If he thinks Torres can reinvigorate them, good luck. We’ve been saying that for a year. Not that we don’t have our own panic going on. The Carroll deal saw more rationalisation by claiming we only paid that much because of Torres’ fee.

Ooooo-kaaaaaay. It appears to be Kenny’s choice and the size of the backing of his judgment indicates he’ll keep the job.

Sunday can’t have hurt! Nerves got the better of everyone, and chances were bound to be at a premium. It was probably for the best we played them immediately after The Defection. They weren’t in tune with ‘him’ at all, and we got the usual pantomime out of our systems. There’ll be needle next time of course, but for now each club must plot its own course.

I did wonder if Fernando was deafened by the silence the last 10 minutes of the game was played in, though. Such tight affairs can go either way, and despite Maxi it went ours.

Everyone else was exceptional. Given the putrid sludge pre-Dalglish it’s small wonder people get carried away but there’s a long hard road ahead of us.

The first few miles have been wonderful, though.