The only question for Chelsea now is who will go first? Torres or AVB?
It does not get much more humiliating than this.
Hooked at half-time after failing to give the combined central defensive might of Curtis Davies and Pablo Ibanez a single moment of anxiety.
Hooked after extending his spell without a goal to 20 games.
Hooked after failing to produce a single scoring attempt.
Once the sharpest striker in world football, now a hollow shell of a player, shamed by his callow manager.
Rock-bottom for Fernando Torres.
Chelsea 1-1 Birmingham: Sunday Mirror match report
To his dwindling collection of loyalists, the removal of Torres from this cup-tie smacked of a scapegoat substitution.
And the service during a quite abysmal first half performance from Chelsea was pitiful.
But there was a time when Torres could make things happen, could hijack defenders, could create his own opening with his short-distance speed.
No longer.
Rarely can there have been such a marked and prolonged descent from magnificence to mediocrity.
Maybe you can trace it back to when he collected his World Cup medal in the summer of 2010.
He missed the end of Liverpool’s season, battling to get fit for the tournament in South Africa.
But as Spain edged towards their coronation, Torres contributed little.
It was meant to be the moment when he cemented his place as a stellar light of world football.
Instead, he was outshone by so many of his compatriots.
It has left a psychological scar.
Other than a brief spell when Kenny Dalglish took caretaker charge at Anfield – the last time I saw Torres have both an accomplished AND productive game was at Molineux in January of last year – the last two seasons have been an abyss.
Watching him battle against Sunderland here last month, you felt he had taken half a stride forward.
But those half-strides are routinely followed by backward leaps.
And now, even the goodwill around Stamford Bridge appears to be dissipating.
How can such a feted footballer, a matinee idol of a player, cut such an isolated, dispirited figure? Maybe a psychologist might help – in the same way a psychologist can help an individual sportsman with the yips.
His manager is clearly not helping. But Torres is not the only one failing to respond to the philosophies and approach of Andre Villas-Boas.
This does not look a group gathering protectively around their coach.
Unlike the Birmingham City squad.
Scrabbling to summon up a full bench and without his two first choice strikers, this was another modest marker in the understated managerial career of Chris Hughton.
Dignified on his exit from St James’ Park, Hughton is quietly cultivating a reputation as a skilled organiser and motivator.
He engineered a display of rare discipline here – one that fully merited a replay – yet another game in their hectic season.
And although it is a policy part-forced on him, Hughton is nurturing young talent that will bring long-term financial gain to the club.
Jordan Mutch and Nathan Redmond both combined intelligence with flair. The tame attempt when presented with the chance to win the game will only prove to be a point on Redmond’s learning curve.
The graph of the 18-year-old’s career is aiming skywards, unlike that of Torres’ career.
Villas-Boas – a man now in permanent denial – claimed that Torres needs only the ‘mental stimulus’ of a goal to rejuvenate his fortunes.
I suspect his troubles run deeper than that.
Villas-Boas also claimed that Torres had watched the second half – presumably, then, he watched it on a dressing-room monitor.
His absence from the bench, his decision not to take up a seat shoulder-to-shoulder with his watching captain, reflected the footballing solitude of the man.
With Didier Drogba back in harness, that detachment will only grow. It is almost impossible to see how the Torres game can undergo any sort of seismic revival in this environment.
Against depleted Championship opposition, a player being removed by his manager at half-time is a watershed moment.
The only question for Chelsea now is who will go first? The player or the manager?
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