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Drogba-Torres can work believes Di Matteo

Fernando Torres and Didier Drogba can play together up front for Chelsea believes Roberto Di Matteo © Getty Images

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Chelsea manager Roberto Di Matteo trusts that an effective strikeforce partnership between Didier Drogba and Fernando Torres can be forged, and that he is considering ways to make it happen.

Torres' first goals for the club since mid-October came in Sunday's FA Cup win over Leicester, and with Drogba in scoring form of late Di Matteo is now posed with something of a selection headache.

Chelsea travel to title hopefuls Manchester City on Wednesday evening where Drogba is expected to be named as a lone striker, but Di Matteo has intimated that the Ivorian and his Spanish colleague could well be paired up front in future games.

"If the game requires it, yes," said Di Matteo when asked if Chelsea's system could be altered to fit both players in. "We tried it in the Napoli game."

Di Matteo has opted for a single man to lead his front line in each of the four games the Italian has so far been in charge of, and the timely breaking of Torres' goal drought has given the manager a welcome problem.

"It's great for this football club, isn't it?" he said. "To have that firepower in the team, it's fantastic. And we will try to do our best to try to exploit the good form of both.

"It's going to be tough on anybody I leave out. We have a fantastic squad and it hurts to leave players out of that calibre. It's really difficult. I can only field 11 positions and the ones on the bench."

Meanwhile Torres' fellow Spaniard and Chelsea team-mate Juan Mata was delighted to see his colleague return to scoring ways.

"He went through a tough period," Mata said. "He was suffering because he was not scoring. He is playing more often now and he is regaining trust in himself."

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