Jose Mourinho confirms Fernando Torres staying at Chelsea

Fernando Torres
Fernando Torres in action for Chelsea during the pre-season.

Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho confirmed on Thursday that Fernando Torres will not be leaving not be leaving Stamford Bridge this season.

In accordance to Premier League rules introduced at the beginning of the 2010/11 season, clubs cannot name more than 17 non home grown players aged over 21. Thus, it was reported in recent weeks that the Londoners will have to release either one of Peter Cech and Fernando Torres to fulfill the club’s foreign quota.

Mourinho: Chelsea need 3 strikers

Speaking in a recent interaction with the media, Mourinho confirmed that the player to depart Chelsea for complying with the rule will not be Fernando Torres.

The gaffer said: "No. Three strikers are fundamental in a squad and we have three strikers; Fernando, Didier and Diego so one of them is not (going) for sure"

However, with the departure of Romelu Lukaku to Everton recently, it seems to be a perfectly logical decision on Mourinho’s part not to fiddle with the depth up-front to bring the squad down to 17 non home grown talents.

Mourinho further iterated his desire to see more home grown talents coming up through the system at Chelsea to avoid facing such circumstances in the future.

"We have a good squad. The perfect squad would be with this 18 players, not 17 or 16, but rules are rules and we are working hard, even here, for not to have these kind of problems in the future," Mourinho added.

"(We want) to have more English players in our squad which we are going to have in the future, but in this moment we are still in the middle of this process. So at the moment we have to make a decision about one player not to be on that list."

Will the departures of a whole host of young talents (most notably Romelu Lukaku, Lucas Piazon and Ryan Bertrand) from Chelsea in recent months (mostly on loan), many have questioned whether the youth policy at the club can still succeed with the pressures of producing instant results burdened heavily on them at a club such as Chelsea.

A large section of the Chelsea faithful will quietly be pleased to see the back of Fernando Torres. The Spaniard has failed miserably to adapt to life in the Capital following his £50million move from Liverpool.

However, with no one from the academy forthcoming to stake a place up front and Chelsea seemingly done in the transfer market, the Londoners are likely to keep Torres in the squad for the upcoming season.

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Edited by Staff Editor