By STEVE BRENNER
RAFA BENITEZ hailed a new-look Fernando Torres after his deadly double shot down Sunderland.
Chelsea’s Spanish hitman went from Gloomy Gus on Wednesday to Cheshire Cat yesterday after helping Benitez bag his first league win since arriving at Stamford Bridge.
Amazingly, Torres’ second from the spot was the first time he has ever taken — and scored — a penalty in England.
The £50million flop, who opened the scoring on 11 minutes before playing a part in Juan Mata’s killer third, put on a Dream Team Star Man display to lift the Blues into third place.
Delighted Benitez said: “I’ve said before that the team are playing well and we’re starting to create chances.
“If we do that, Fernando will start to score goals.
“You could see the team were doing really well, especially in the first-half.
“I’ve seen his confidence is getting better.
“We’ve been trying to adjust things and you can already see players getting more confident.
“They’ve started to understand what we’re trying to do and Fernando is one of them.
“He knows the movement that I want from him. The rest of the team know each other really well. Little by little we’re adjusting things and we have more confidence with the quality that we have.
“That will help us to win more games.”
Torres never got a look in when it came to penalties at Liverpool with Steven Gerrard always taking charge.
And he famously did not take one in last season’s Champions League final shootout win over Bayern Munich.
Benitez added: “We have three players who are down for penalties, Hazard, Torres and Luiz.
“Any of them can take them. But, for me, the positive thing is Fernando showed enough confidence to take one.
“David is always confident but Fernando wanted it, which is great. It’s fair to say we’re seeing Fernando now play with much more confidence, more belief and the team’s becoming like that as well.”
Chelsea jetted off to Japan for the World Club Championship last night buzzing after ending their seven-game winless streak in the Premier League.
Blues will play two games in Japan — a semi-final on Thursday and then either the final or third-placed play-off a week today before coming home.
Interim boss Benitez is eyeing his first gong as boss — after only taking the reins on November 21 following Roberto Di Matteo’s shock sacking.
Rafa said: “Today, the headlines might be about winning in the Premier League but we saw we’ve got a clear idea of what we want to do.
“Winning the Club Championship with Liverpool was a great experience and, hopefully, it will be a similar experience with Chelsea.
“It will be difficult but we’re working very hard to organise everything properly.
“I guess it’s not ideal, it’s a very short turn-around and the fitness guys are going crazy right now.
Benitez added: “I wasn’t thinking too much about my first league win. I was really pleased the other day when we won 6-1 in the Champions League and with the passion of the team and the high tempo.”
Sunderland were looking forward to regrouping at half-time before Seb Larsson’s stupid challenge on Ramires allowed Torres to make it 2-0 from the penalty spot. Mata slid in a third on 49 minutes and, although Adam Johnson pulled one back, it was another nightmare afternoon for Martin O’Neill.
Sunderland are now deep in trouble in the bottom three and with Reading next up on Tuesday, only a win will do.
Boss O’Neill said: “Reading is a big game, it always was going to be and we’ll have to be strong to cope with it.
“If we win the game we’re up to 15th but that’s not the issue — it’s the points on the board that’s more important.
“We’ve dropped into the bottom three and it’s a tough fight.
“When we have a foothold in games we need to make it count.
“It’s heavy punishment for our mistakes but we’ll fight our way out of it.
“We’ve got enough talent and self-belief to do that.”
