Cech defends misfiring Torres

Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech insists he is not concerned by Fernando Torres' form and is confident the striker will recover from his horror miss against Manchester United.
Despite scoring Chelsea's only goal in the Blues' 3-1 defeat at Manchester United on Sunday, Torres hit the headlines for missing an open goal, firing wide after rounding United keeper David De Gea.

But despite that miss, Cech believes Torres' instinctive second-half finish shows the Spaniard is steadily improving.

"I keep saying the same thing - I can see every time the guy is improving," Cech said. "At Stoke he had a brilliant game, while against Leverkusen he didn't score a goal but created both of them.

"On Sunday, he created a huge chance for Ramires or Daniel Sturridge. But it was a pity Ramires slid in as it was difficult for him to finish it and allowed the keeper to make a save, whereas Daniel would have just tapped it in. So it was unlucky.

"Then he scored a great goal, and got himself another opportunity. What everybody needs to remember is just how well he played for the whole game and the great goal he did score. He created a lot and his movement was there. You can see it. I'm not worried about it. He will score lots of goals.

"Everybody counts the goals a striker gets. It's always like that. But if you see, for example, Dimitar Berbatov got to United not only because he scores goals but because he created 30 every season for Tottenham.

"With Fernando it's the same. He scores goals, as he showed, but he can create them as well. Ideally, of course, you want your strikers to score. But if they can create two goals every game, then who cares how many they score?"

Despite suffering their first defeat of the season, Cech insists Chelsea could have taken all three points away from Old Trafford.

"The score doesn't really reflect on how we played," Cech said. "You might look at it, 3-1, and say it was an easy game for them. But I don't think it was.

"If you look at their goals, the first was offside, then they scored a wonder-goal from Nani - he got too much space to shoot - and then had a lucky deflection for Rooney's goal. But that was more or less all they had, while we had three big chances in the first half and didn't take them."