Fernando Torres has thanked the Chelsea fans for their support over the last year, and hopes to repay their faith with victory over Manchester United on Sunday.
The Spaniard was speaking as the studio guest on Chelsea TV's Friday Night Live, where he answered questions from presenter Gigi Salmon, spoke with fans on the phone and responded to supporters' emails and tweets ahead of the weekend's fixture against the Barclays Premier League champions.
  1. Having admitted things have not gone to plan on a personal level since switching from the north-west to London (despite claiming the weather down south is 'amazing'!), Torres explained how he has taken strength from the Chelsea faithful.
  2. 'SinceI joined Chelsea it has been amazing. I would like things to be much better but the support they give me every day is amazing, and for me it is a pleasure to be here,' the striker said.
  3. 'To hear the fans sing your name, it's the best feeling you can have. The relationship with the fans or what they think of me is really important, it makes me feel better or stronger, and from the first day I felt this support. Every time they sing my support it is amazing.
  4. 'I remember a game against Wolverhampton and I was on the bench, and they were still singing my name.
  5. 'I've been very lucky to live very good moments but that game, when I was in the middle of nothing and not playing was maybe the best memory I have in all my career.
  6. 'At the beginning of the season I went through a hard moment, I was not playing, things were wrong and I was eight games without playing, I had never been in this situation before.

'The only thing that gave me hope was the support of the people. That game against Wolverhampton showed me there are important things to fight for, the love of the fans, the support of the club, my team-mates as well. But the fans are the ones who have always been there from the first day until now.'
Torres was a goalscorer at Old Trafford back in September as we went down 3-1, but his afternoon is largely remembered for the miss after rounding United keeper David De Gea in the final stages.
He hopes for better luck on Sunday as we seek an important three points.
'Hopefully this kind of thing happens once in a life, because it is so hard,' he smiled ruefully. 'It was a strange game, the score could be 5-5 or 6-6.
'We were playing really well when we were playing against them. It was a strange game, we started well but they scored from a free-kick and then the amazing goal from Nani, it looked like every time they attacked they scored. [In the second half] we wanted to keep playing the same and scored in the first minute, then started believing but at the end we couldn't do it.
'It's always difficult to go to play against teams like Man United when you have important players injured but we have a big, strong squad and we are very lucky to have players to cover these positions,' said the former Liverpool man.
'Hopefully Frank can be available to play, JT and Rami are unavailable and Ashley has his red card, but we have possibilities to win the game, we have been working hard and we are sure we can do it.
  1. 'It's always one of the biggest games of the season and special to play against Man U, especially at home because the fans will be excited and it's a good test to show we are improving in the last month. We know what we want to do, and you can see the excitement on the training ground every day, and the fans are asking us for a good result. I've had good games against Man U, I scored last time and hopefully we can beat them and get three more points.'