The 5 worst signings in Chelsea's history

#4 Fernando Torres

Fernando Torres' name remains synonymous with being a big-money flop

Striker Fernando Torres often tops lists of the worst Chelsea signings ever, largely because the Blues paid a ludicrous fee for him – a British record of £50m in January 2011 – and he simply didn’t live up to the lofty standards he’d set himself at Liverpool. But was the Spaniard really that bad? Well, yes, but it’s definitely arguable that the Blues have made a couple of worse signings.

Torres’ debut for Chelsea actually came against the club he’d moved from – Liverpool – but the match ended in a loss and he failed to find the back of the net. That set off a long drought – 14 matches to be exact - and it took another three months for him to score his first goal for the Blues in a game against West Ham. Unfortunately, it would be his only goal of the season.

2011/12 proved to be a slightly better season for him; he scored 11 goals across all competitions including a famous last-minute goal against Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final – the goal that sent Chelsea to the final, which they went onto win – but at times he appeared to have lost his finishing ability altogether and even went on a run of 24 games without a goal.

Torres did manage to score more goals in 2012/13 – a total of 22 in all competitions – but by that stage, he’d already garnered a reputation as a big-money flop that he simply couldn’t shake off, and in 2014 he was sent to AC Milan on loan and never returned to Stamford Bridge. Almost a decade on his name remains synonymous with money wasted.