Didier Drogba has taken a thinly veiled swipe at former team-mate Fernando Torres, hinting that the Spaniard expected to be “the king” at Chelsea.
Drogba was the Blues principle starting striker when Chelsea splashed out a whopping £50 million on signing Torres from Liverpool, a record at the time.
But despite flashes of brilliance, Torres is largely considered to be one of the most expensive duds in the history of the modern game, failing to replicate his brilliant form at Liverpool, and scoring just 20 goals in 110 league appearances.
And now Drogba has lifted the lid on why he reckons it never worked out for El Nino at Stamford Bridge, claiming he was too used to getting his own way at Liverpool.
In his new autobiography, Commitment, the Ivorian says: “With all due respect to Liverpool, at that club, Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres had been the kings.
“But at Chelsea there were 22 kings.”
Ominously, Drogba goes on to say that he believes Jose Mourinho works in “three-year cycles” and that his powerful message stops getting through at a certain point.
He writes: “By the start of the fourth (season) that Jose had been in charge, I think we had started to reach a point where it was sometimes harder for his message to get through.
“We wanted to hear it, we tried, but somehow we had lost a little bit of what made us special.”
Chelsea currently sit 16th in the Premier League after losing seven of their opening 12 matches, and Mourinho is under serious pressure to beat Norwich at home this Saturday.
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