Fernando Torres: Chelsea pals will help me achieve dream

The Spanish striker insists he is relaxed about his goal-free start at Chelsea - he has not scored in five games - and the pressure on his shoulders because of his immense £50million price tag.

Torres admitted he had been yearning for a move to Chelsea - which was "a light at the end of a long dark tunnel" - before it became even a remote prospect and that his respect for Liverpool, the club rather than their fans, began to diminish from the moment that players like Peter Crouch and Alvaro Arbeloa were sold.

Speaking at length in an interview in Spain today, Chelsea's record signing said: "This club and this city offer me all I need to achieve my dream. When I left Spain for Liverpool I thought it was the definitive move in my life but that turned out not to be the case. I've maybe got five and a half more top-class years in my career and you have to do everything in your power to achieve your dreams, which is why Chelsea is ideal.

"I wouldn't have joined Manchester United out of respect for the Liverpool fans, I wouldn't sign for Real Madrid because of my support for Atlético. Barcelona don't need my type of player and Italy doesn't attract me, which meant it had to be Chelsea.

"They were the only ones where I could go and also improve myself. I'd started to take the decision to leave when the stream of sales started with Crouch and Arbeloa then Xabi Alonso and Javier Mascherano were all sold.

"Liverpool were beginning to remind me of Atlético - a great tradition, great plans but no money and needing a lot of time, time which I didn't have, in order to get back to the top.

"I felt that the next six months at Liverpool, through to this summer, were going to feel like three years. So when Chelsea made it known that they wanted me it was like the light at the end of a dark tunnel.

"As I looked around and assessed my options, Chelsea had been the only appealing name but there had been no prospect and when it happened, in the middle of the transfer window, it came out of nowhere."

Torres is one of those rarities - a world-class footballer whose feet are on the ground, whose tastes in life are fairly simple and who craves trophies far more than the superstar lifestyle.

Those who know him trust him for his honesty and reliability which is why he has been left bruised by the swiftness of his move south and thrilled by the atmosphere he has discovered at Chelsea's Cobham training ground.

"Immediately I knew Chelsea wanted me, I went to speak to our sports director and then I asked for a meeting with our entire football department to tell them I wanted to leave," said Torres.

"My team mates knew nothing about it and I wanted to be honest, to tell people straight. If others haven't been as honest as me, then that's not my problem. Football is not a sport full of honest people.

"You aren't able to tell the truth or speak clearly - it's a business, pure and simple and no-one is your friend. I spent the three best years of my footballing life, perhaps even of my personal life, there and I tried to treat them completely honestly so that I could leave with my conscience clear.

"What I didn't expect, when I got to Chelsea, was that the atmosphere would be so different from Liveprool. I expected it to be more distant given that this has a name for being a superstar team.

"There are better personal relations and more jokes between the players than at Liverpool, where everything is a lot more serious. Here you don't have to demonstrate that you are a professional, it's taken as the minimum. Winning trophies is all they care about here and, for me, the Champions League is the dream - no doubt.

"After having won the European Championship and the World Cup, it's the maximum challenge left. Obviously I want to win the Premier League too, it's one of the great prizes in the game and I honestly think that we will win more than one while I'm here.

"It was just life that we played Liverpool for my debut and lost and I'm quite sure that the goals will come for me in due course because I always expected that there would be a settling-in period."

The Blues play the return leg of their round-of-16 Champions League clash with Copenhagen next Wednesday, with one foot already in the quarter finals thanks to their 2-0 away win. Torres knows that owner Roman Abramovich is equally obsessed with winning Europe's premier trophy and has been impressed by his brief contact with the Russian so far.

He added: "I won't share what he has said with me in meetings but when he comes to the training ground he's really involved in everything that's happening and he's nothing like the image you probably have of him from afar.

"He and this club came within one missed penalty of winning the Champions League and you can feel that it's something which slipped through their hands - as if it were wrenched from them. Just like everyone at Chelsea, I'd give anything for this to be another Double season - that's the dream."