Torres eyes Europa League glory

Fernando Torres insists Chelsea's success in this season's Europa League is helping what is a young Blues squad.

Chelsea failed to progress from the group stage of the Champions League before Christmas but have excelled in the Europa League and face a two-legged semi-final against Basel after seeing off Sparta Prague, Steaua Bucharest and Rubin Kazan.

Chelsea are 2.40 to win Thursday's first leg at Basel's St Jakob-Park stadium with Torres available at 7.00 to open the scoring in Switzerland.

Torres continues to be criticised in many quarters but insists he is enjoying his football again under the guidance of the Blues' interim boss Rafa Benitez and has already found the net 20 times in all competitions this season.

The Spanish striker said: "We have a young squad and we need to learn winning ways, and this is a very good way. It is not the Champions League but it is the Europa League. Now we're in the semi-finals, everyone can see we want to win, and the team, I think, is happy.

"The competition is helping the team a lot, because it is giving us a lot of satisfaction - not like in the Premier League this season, and we lost the semi-final of the FA Cup, so we were also close. But the Europa League is keeping us in a good mood and thinking it could be a good season."

Chelsea can be backed at 2.30 to win this season's Europa League and at 1.30 to finish in the top four of the Premier League.

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