Olympic gold medal winner Darren Campbell offers to help Fernando Torres regain lost pace

Torres does not look as sharp at Chelsea as during his time at Liverpool

Former Olympic sprint champion Darren Campbell has claimed he could solve Fernando Torres's goalscoring problems for Chelsea.

Campbell, who won gold in the 4x100m at the Athens Games eight years ago, believes Torres needed just a fortnight's specialist training to recover most of his lost pace.

Torres briefly worked with Campbell during his first year at Stamford Bridge, prior to the departure of Dr Bryan English as Chelsea's medical director during Andre Villas-Boas's reign.

Interim manager Rafael Benitez suggested on Tuesday that Torres needed to do gym work to regain his explosive power and Campbell, a sprint coach in football and rugby union, told the Daily Telegraph: "It's something that is best done in pre-season but I think Fernando just needs two weeks when he hasn't got to worry about playing on the Saturday and just put in a nice two-week training programme that I think would definitely bring the majority of his speed back.

"I'm sure I could fix him. It doesn't have to be a lengthy process because these guys are already extremely fit. That's the great thing about working with footballers and rugby players. You're not having to worry about the base fitness so you just go in and teach the raw speed.

"In the case of Fernando, I think he would also probably need to do a bit of weightlifting as well as the running and the speed drills to put some power back into his muscles. That's why sprinters lift weights, to gain that explosive speed and power."

Meanwhile, Los Angeles Galaxy chief executive Tim Leiweke has admitted he is "honoured" his club have been linked with a move for Frank Lampard.

Lampard has long been touted with a move to Major League Soccer as a big-name replacement for David Beckham, who is quitting Galaxy at the end of their season.

Leiweke told Sky Sports News: "Chelsea is a club we have a great relationship with.

"We've heard of other players mentioned that are playing in Europe and we want to respect their clubs and where they're at."

But he added: "When you mention the likes of Frank Lampard to me, he's one of the class acts of football. I'm a huge fan of him as an individual, a huge fan of him as a captain and a huge fan of him as a player.

"We're honoured that anyone would even speculate that Frank would want to come here, that's a good day."

PA