Rafa Benitez believes his methods are working at Chelsea, claiming 'the team are playing better'

Rafa Benitez has claimed that Chelsea are doing much better now, and believes Fernando Torres’ return to form is proof.

Benitez had claimed that the squad he inherited was unfit, tired and lacked fight, but insists he is overseeing great improvement in the players.

‘Two or three things that we are doing for some players are really good,” Benitez said, claiming the sharpness in the majority of his squad was improving.

‘Fernando is one of the examples.’

He added: ‘He’s scoring goals and the team is winning and playing well, so he’s really happy, not just because he’s scoring goals but also because the team’s doing well.

‘I think that the team has an influence on him because the team is doing well, so the team is playing better, creating more chances, so Fernando is taking more chances.’

When asked to put a number on the squads fitness, Rafa responded: ‘You can more or less think but imagine I will say to you that they are 90 per cent fit and we lose on Sunday, you will say, ‘What is going on? What if I say 20 per cent and we beat Aston Villa 5-0? Football is so special that you cannot guarantee 70, 50 or 60.

‘What I can say is we have time to bring players in the team and then change players, so we can manage the tiredness a little bit better.’

‘Some players, they were quite tired, the day before, we were training and I was talking with the fitness coach. We had three or four that could be a problem. We decided to change some players but I didn’t want to change too many.’

I believe Chelsea would have got back to winning ways under Roberto Di Matteo, and Roberto would probably have won the World Club Cup. The Italian knew how to win the big trophies. As for Fernando Torres, he was scoring goals at the start of the season, and don’t forget all the new players are being integrated into the team and this takes time.

Chelsea are consistently bad in November and Roberto should have used more of his squad. Rafa is rotating the players in the wrong way, but it is starting to turn around. He inherited a very strong squad and there was no way those players could have carried on losing under any manager. Rafa can take the credit, but I’m not convinced just yet.

Am I being too harsh?