Five Cantonas

The big news yesterday was that Fernando Torres has finally ended his long-term unrequited relationship with Roman Abramovic and signed for Chelsea. This has been on the cards for about 18 months, but has finally come about. King Kenny obviously couldn’t persuade him that Liverpool were going to be challenging for the title any time soon, which isn’t surprising since they haven’t won the league in the Premiership era.

When Ronaldo left United, it didn’t come as a surprise. He made it fairly clear from day one that he wouldn’t be around forever; that he wanted to play for Real Madrid one day. Fairly gutting perhaps, but there was none of this faux-loyalty from him. We were his employers, and he gave us his all for the time he was here before leaving for a huge fee.

It is only a few months since Torres said he loved the club and wanted his kids to have scouse accents! Why anyone would want that I don’t know, but the sentiment is at least there.

Of course, over the weekend he handed in a transfer request, and has since moved to Chelsea.

Now, I can’t lay my hands on the exact quotes, but twitter is going fairly mental with reports of Torres implying that Liverpool aren’t even a big club.

Mark Ogden, Telegraph, for example, tweeted;

“Just to make things, (sic) Torres says ‘I play for one of the top clubs in the world now’. Oh dear”.

What a huge and hilarious kick in the teeth for the dippers.

They’re replacing him, by the sounds, with a similarly fickle badge-kisser in Andy Carrol. In October he signed a new contract, saying at the time that he wanted to be remembered as a legend alongside Milburn and Shearer. In January, he leaves for an admittedly ludicrous £35m.

Instead, Tyneside will remember him as another Andy Cole. It’s a huge blow to lose Carroll, but a lot will depend on how they spend that £35m. After all, £35 million would have bought you Meszut Ozil, Sami Khedira, Rafael van der Vaart and Javier Hernandez this summer, and I would swap Carroll for those four in a heartbeat.

At least they didn’t have the time to panic and make a stupid signing to replace their main man, like… say… Liverpool did.

Something nobody seems to be mentioning is that this could have an impact on Luis Suarez, who presumably expected to be playing with Torres when he signed. Having psyched himself up for partnering the cultured and classy (on the field) Torres, how he will adjust to playing with a neanderthal Geordie battering ram is anyones guess.

So what of Chelsea? I thought Roman Abramovic had lost interest, but instead this, along with the signing of David Luiz (who I rate) smacks of a desperate attempt to buy the title, just like he did when he spent millions of roubles on a brand new team for Jose Mourinho.

It addresses some of their issues too. Drogba is on the wane, and Torres sees to that. If Luiz makes an impact, the decline of Terry can be abated. If they can replace Lampard, stop Essien from getting injured, and buy a few squad players for a change, then they might have a decent team again.

Overall though, I’m fairly happy that United stayed clear of this nonsense. No club comes out of the circus with any credit, and by getting our business done early in the window we again show that we have both class, and a class manager.