6 worst January transfers in EPL history

#2 Fernando Torres

Fernando Torres

Liverpool - Chelsea

Date of arrival - 31 January 2011

Transfer fee - £50m

A long-term target of Abramovic's at Chelsea right from the first year of his takeover, the Russian Oligarch finally got his man in January 2011 for a fee of £50m, which was the then record for a British transfer.

Quite how Torres went from one of the best strikers in the world confident in his abilities at Liverpool to a player full of doubt and poor in front of goal at Chelsea is anyone's guess, as in four years at Stamford Bridge, Torres was so poor, looking a shadow of the man who terrorized opposition defences (including Chelsea's) at Liverpool.

Things began badly for Torres, as he lost 1-0 on his debut to his former club and perhaps this was a sign of things to come, as he went 903 minutes before opening his Chelsea account in April, which was to be his only goal of the season in 18 appearances for his new club.

It got progressively worse for Torres and despite some high points such as the equalizing goal in the 2012 Champions League semi-final against Barcelona, becoming the first player to score in seven different competitions in the same season or netting the opener in the 2-1 victory in the Europa League final of 2013, there were too many low points that it would only take the most biased supporter to consider Torres' Chelsea career anything but a failure.

The Spaniard's spell at Chelsea was characterized by numerous goalscoring droughts in addition to that mentioned above, including a 24-game scoreless run that stretched from October 2011 to March 2012, over 11 hours between November and December 2012 among others.

Torres ended his Chelsea career in 2015 with a loan move to AC Milan having scored just 20 Premier League goals in 110 appearances which is a far cry from the figures (65 in 102) that he posted at Liverpool.