Personally I don't understand the goodwill towards him now, in contrast to the hatred Michael Owen still gets as an example. Torres directly left for a rival; Owen joined one having realised he was never going to get his return here having been gone for four years.
Sure, Owen joined a bigger rival, but aside from annoying a few blue Mancs he did fuck all there anyway, whereas seeing Torres lift Big Ears and do as many interviews as he possibly could telling us that's why he joined them (that's right, Torres won fuck all for us, whereas Owen did), before coming on & stomping all over our title hopes in 13/14 with that assist for Willian was galling.
1. Owen was homegrown, came through the ranks and showed us fuck all loyalty. Ran his contract down to the point where we had to accept fuck all plus Nunez for him. Had the chance to come back a year later, and went to Newcastle instead. Then joined United. And since he retired has generally been a fucking prick, fairly regularly slagging the club off and doing stupid shit which does the opposite of endearing him to Liverpool fans. He'd had years of success with us and a cracking new manager had just arrived right before he left.
2. Torres wasn't homegrown, he owed us fuck all. We dragged a huge amount of money out for him considering he was shot. He's been massively complimentary since he left Chelsea, made it a lot clearer why he left. And yeah he wont fuck all with us, exactly. We were practically in a relegation fight for much of that season.
This is exactly why Torres gets more goodwill, because he seems to 'get' the club a lot more than someone who was at the club since he was like 9 years old.
Owens a fucking prick, basically