Benitez: How I got best out of Torres

The Spanish striker flourished under the stewardship of fellow countryman Benitez and made a record breaking start to his Liverpool career. Scoring 24 goals, he became the Premier League’s most prolific foreign goal-scorer in a debut season, eclipsing the record set by Ruud van Nistelrooy.

Following his first season in the Premier League, Torres, 27, has struggled with injuries and failed to consistently maintain that debut season form. And since his January transfer to Chelsea, he has endured an 11-game goal drought.

Benitez revealed how he managed to get the best out of Torres at Liverpool.

"Fernando is a good professional and although he had some injuries he was learning the English style. He was scoring a lot of goals at the beginning and at the end," he told Yahoo!

"He has a good mentality, he has good quality and his relationship with me was good also because we could talk in Spanish. When we needed to say something in Spanish we could say it clearly and we were not hiding anything."

Torres left Liverpool with some swiping comments at the manner in which the club was run, claiming further success could have been achieved if the manager had received adequate financial backing - something Benitez refused to be drawn into.

"It was a difficult time and we had to manage the situation," he said. "Had it not been for the situation we could have achieved even better things but I think we managed to achieve good things given the situation.

"Only time will tell whether Fernando was right or not to say those things."

Visit the Dugout www.yahoo.co.uk/dugout for new interviews every week with England’s top football managers.

By Killian Woods