Fernando Torres has the backing of his manager at Chelsea but still the goals are not coming. Can he restore past glories?

Fernando Torres looked embarrassed as he stood, smiling wanly, on the roof of a high-rise Kowloon carpark. Doing his bit to promote Chelsea’s Asian merchandising operation during the club’s pre-season tour, the £50m striker was modelling a personalised version of the club’s latest replica shirt design. The top in question had been emblazoned with the word “Triumph”. Writ large in Cantonese and English it was intended to capture the essence of Roman Abramovich’s ultimate trophy signing but instead it prompted barely concealed sniggers.

Standing alongside the Spaniard two months ago, Frank Lampard posed in a shirt adorned by “Happiness” and Petr Cech paraded the message “Champion”, but neither looked remotely as out of place as the man who has now scored only once in 23 games since swapping Liverpool for Chelsea last January.

Halted rudely in his tracks by, first, the frailties of his right knee and, later, a change of tactical and physical landscape, Torres is no longer the goalscoring juggernaut who once stalked the nightmares of Manchester United’s Nemanja Vidic. The overriding suspicion is that the past 18 months have been played out against a soundtrack dominated increasingly by initially alien, now horribly familiar, doubting voices inside the Spain striker’s head.

It would be no surprise were they to tell Torres that, in paying so much money for him last January, Chelsea were buying the old El Niño. Unfortunately the original forward who before a second, albeit ostensibly successful, meniscus repair in April 2010 simply could not stop scoring appears to have gone into

• ‘It is a big step for Chelsea and an enormous challenge’
• ‘We expect Chelsea to be challenging again’

Sir Alex Ferguson says André Villas-Boas has been presented with “an enormous challenge” after being installed as the new Chelsea manager. Villas-Boas became the Blues’ fifth manager in four years this summer, replacing Carlo Ancelotti, who was dropped one season after securing the domestic Double.

Villas-Boas has only two seasons of top-flight experience in the Portuguese Liga behind him – his performance at Porto last season was impressive as he won three trophies, including the Europa League, and the title by 21 points.

Aged only 33, he is the same age as some of the players he has taken charge of at Stamford Bridge. “It is a big step for Chelsea and an enormous challenge,” Ferguson said.

It took the Scot back to the start of his own career almost four decades previously. That was at East Stirling, where Ferguson was employed on a part-time basis and collected £40 a week – his first task being to find himself a goalkeeper because the club did not have one.

“I was 32 when I started but I was managing a wee Second Division team in Scotland,” Ferguson said. “All I had was a physio. I had no assistant manager or anything like that. He has the advantage, irrespective of his age, of having the staff he wants to have. It is a strong possibility he will have enough staff to overcome that type of move.”

Villas-Boas has appointed the former Chelsea midfielder and West Brom manager Roberto Di Matteo as his new assistant and installed Ivan Ortega as his fitness coach. Further appointments are bound to follow as Villas-Boas adjusts to his new environment.

“He knows the club,” said Ferguson. “He has been there before so that is an advantage. He has a very experienced bunch of players there and for a young manager having to go to a club of that size, experienced players are a help to him. We expect Chelsea to be challenging again.”

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