As far as prolific strikers in the Premier League go, Chelsea’s new signing Demba Ba is up there with the best of them. With 13 league goals behind him and a £7 million clause in his contract at Newcastle it was no wonder the Blues swooped to capture the Senegalese hit-man. But where does that leave the £50 million man - the man who is supposed to be the head honcho up front for Chelsea, Fernando Torres?

It is no secret that club owner Roman Abramovich wants to protect his investment in Torres and wants to see him on the pitch, at his best, in a Chelsea shirt. This is considered one of the main reasons that Rafa Benitez was hired as the interim manager when Roberto Di Matteo was sacked. The task at hand for Benitez, as well as to win games and trophies, is to get Torres back to the kind of form he showed when Rafa first bought him for Liverpool back in 2007.

This is not an easy task of course. It’s been a long time since the Spaniard has reached the kind of level he was at back then. There have been signs under Benitez that Torres can get perhaps get his confidence back to some degree and can score goals and spearhead Chelsea’s attack in a reputable way, but now Ba has arrived, the challenge Torres faces will be, first and foremost, to stake his claim as the club’s first choice centre-forward. This is something the 28-year-old found difficult last season when in competition with Didier Drogba for the central striker’s role.  

Before Ba arrived, Torres commanded the position in virtually every game and really made it his own. But it will be interesting to see how it affects his confidence and his performance level if Ba takes his place in the starting line-up on a regular basis. At the moment it would be pretty hard to argue the case for Torres that he should be in the side ahead of Ba. The Senegal international scored twice on his debut, just as he did in his last game for Newcastle, that incredible 7-3 mauling at the hands of Arsenal. Ba also started in Chelsea’s impressive 4-0 away win at Stoke, although he did not score that day. The one game where Torres has been chosen ahead of Ba so far was the League Cup semi-final first leg against Swansea, in which Chelsea suffered a 2-0 defeat.

This game really told its own story about the two players. Torres huffed and puffed for 81 minutes of that game but his efforts proved fruitless as he was unable to break through a stout Swansea back four and never looked like posing any real threat. Then when Ba entered the fray with just nine minutes remaining, Chelsea suddenly looked dangerous and capable of causing havoc in the Swansea backline. He immediately had two headed chances, the first getting ahead of the defender to meet Branislav Ivanovic’s cross, only to be denied by Swans’ keeper Gerhard Tremmel. The second effort was when Marko Marin broke from the wing and flighted the ball into the box, only for Ba to steer his header just wide of the left-hand post. He’d already had more chances than Torres did in the whole of the rest of the game.

Swansea had now begun to look shaky at the back and in time added on, the Senegalese predator ran through on goal with only Tremmel to beat. He knocked the ball around the advancing goalkeeper but then appeared to be clipped as he went past and hit the deck. Instead of awarding a penalty though, referee Anthony Taylor decided to book Ba for diving. The officials then managed to foil Ba a second time, after the Chelsea super-sub blasted the ball into the back of the net, only to have the goal ruled out for offside. A late goal from Swansea super-sub Danny Graham gave the Welsh side a valuable 2-0 lead to take into the second leg at the Liberty Stadium.  

The obvious question for Benitez after the defeat had to be, why did he not start with Ba up front? Just from the impact he had in those pulsating last nine minutes plus stoppage time, you could see that Chelsea were much more threatening and looked way more likely to score. Looking at that, it’s highly unlikely that if Ba had started the game instead of Torres, it would have ended 2-0 to the visitors. As soon as he hit the field it looked only a matter of time before he found the net. Unfortunately, due to coming on so late, he ran out of time. You could even go so far as to say Chelsea might have actually won the game had Ba started instead of Torres.  

This surely begs the question, how much longer are they going to persist in playing Torres, when there is clearly a better marksman at the club? When you have trophies at stake, like the league cup in this instance, you have to maximise your chances of winning. Starting Ba ahead of Torres would do that. There is of course one problem with this though - and that is Abramovich. It’s well documented that the Russian wants to see his £50 million investment featuring in the first choice eleven, rather than on the bench. It is no coincidence that previous Blues boss Roberto Di Matteo was fired after a game that effectively ended their participation in this season’s Champions League – and a game in which Torres was left off the team-sheet.  

So Benitez will have to tread carefully if he is going to consider dropping Torres for Ba on a regular basis. Sooner or later though, you wonder whether the Russian billionaire will just have to bite the bullet with Torres and accept that the team may have a better chance of success with Ba in the starting line-up. Chelsea could still salvage something from the season even though they are out of the Champions League and 14 points behind Manchester United in the league. They do of course have the second leg of the League Cup semi-final to come, so an opportunity to overturn the two goal deficit when they go to Swansea. Plus there is still the FA Cup, and now the Europa League to compete for too, which is at least some consolation for crashing out of the competition they won so remarkably last year.      

But as the Swansea game demonstrated, in order to be successful in these competitions, a sacrifice may need to be made, and the Blues may need to make Ba their main man going forward, leaving Torres to play more of a peripheral role. What this would mean for Torres’ career remains to be seen. He will have to either up his game to prove that he can compete with Ba for a place in the starting line-up, or end up fading away as a shadow of the player he once was. That will be down to his attitude, aptitude and, ultimately, whether he still has what it takes to be a top class striker. 

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Contributed by richbrawn1