MIGHT TORRES END UP ON THE BENCH?

In the space of several months we have gotten for ourselves, in summary:

• Fernando Torres on a 21m pound move from Atletico Madrid, while Luis Garcia has gone the other direction;
• Andriy Voronin on a free transfer from Bayer Leverkusen;
• Yossi Benayoun on a 5m move from West Ham which saw Craig Bellamy moving to the Hammers;
• Ryan Babel on a 12m move from Ajax;
• Lucas Leiva, the Brazil U-20 captain;
• Sebastian Leto, an exciting young Argentinian according to Benitez;
• And Nikolay Mihailov, who is according to a friend an exciting young goalkeeper all the way from Bulgaria.

This means that our squad now have an abundance of attacking talent. If you had fun last season trying to guess the number of ways Rafa could assemble his first XI, you would have an even greater headache this time round.

Currently, Torres, Voronin, Crouch, Kuyt, and Babel can be squeezed into a first team with two or three strikers.

Rafa looks likely to employ either a 4-4-2 or a 4-3-3 formation that is reminiscent of Chelsea. Which means he probably has these options:

• Voronin and Crouch: We have seen in recent games that Voronin is much more than a makeweight - indeed, he is the top scorer for this pre-season. A finisher, Crouch can be a perfect complement to knock down high balls for him to score, a la a John Toshack-Kevin Keegan combination.
• Kuyt and Torres: Kuyt makes up for his lack in finishing with a superb work rate. Torres doesn't run as much, but with Kuyt running defences ragged, Torres can sneak in to finish.
• Babel and Crouch: Babel, young and energetic, can take the burden off the less pacey but much taller Robo, and this can probably help Crouch with off-the-ball movement.

There are of course many more combinations that are possible, but all of them will leave you wondering: Does Torres really fit into a system with two or three strikers?

Over at Atletico he was El Nino, the one-and-only Kid, the undisputed King of the territory. Over at Liverpool, to expect him to share the limelight with another striker seems strange, even improbable.

Torres has qualities many strikers will envy, but can these qualities be useful in partnerships? While Andriy Voronin looks like he can slip comfortably into any partnership with the Liverpool strikers, I feel that Torres may feel stifled if the final third is congested with another Liverpool striker.

That is why I predict that he may end up on the bench for the majority of the games next season. He is a player whose appearance, no doubt, can change the complexion of the game, but to expect him to work according to the team plan from the start might seem a little harder for him because of the freedom he was given at Atletico.

Of course, this is only a prediction: while last pre-season I was imagining that Mark Gonzalez was going to run Gary Neville ragged (but the opposite happened), things may well change beyond our imagination.

Perhaps the 17-year wait for the title is about to end - without Torres playing as many first-team starts as his transfer fee might suggest.