Manchester City’s hopes of completing the quadruple this season were ended on Saturday evening as they crashed out of the FA Cup at the hands of Chelsea.
Hakim Ziyech’s second half goal was enough to separate the two sides at Wembley, with a much-changed City side lacking any sort of attacking rhythm against Thomas Tuchel’s men, who could have won more comfortably if not for disallowed goals from Ziyech and Christian Pulisic.
Pep Guardiola opted to rest a number of first team regulars such as John Stones, Phil Foden and Bernardo Silva at Wembley and frankly, the starting XI he put out did little to justify that decision.
One man who was particularly poor in the semi-final was Spanish winger Ferran Torres, who was given a rare opportunity to start by his manager. As per SofaScore, the 21-year-old earned a disappointing 6.2/10 rating for his performance, which was comfortably the worst of any player who started the game.
Was Torres City’s worst performer?
Yes
No
Whilst the young winger, who signed from Valencia in the summer, has popped up with nine goals and three assists in all competitions in his debut season for City, his overall performances have often been little to write home about.
Unfortunately, he went missing when asked to play on the big occasion by Guardiola, registering just 16 touches of the ball whilst he was on the pitch and contributing just 10 passes. For context, City goalkeeper Zack Steffen had 36 touches and complete 28 of his 29 passes, which emphasises just how little Torres was involved.
The Spanish international also failed to contribute a single shot, key pass or dribble in his 64 minutes on the pitch, whilst he won just one of his seven duels during the match, so it was no surprise to see him hauled off by Guardiola in the second half.
Foden, who came on a second-half substitute, contributed more dribbles, shots and key passes than Torres, so it is clear that the 21-year-old was way below-par. When he has featured in the Premier League this season, he has averaged 1.5 shots, 0.6 key passes and 0.8 dribbles per game, which again demonstrates just how poor he was in the semi-final this evening.
Guardiola will surely be frustrated that a player who didn’t feature in midweek was so poor on Saturday, and Torres clearly has a long way to go before he can be considered good enough to be a first team regular at City.
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