The Fernando Torres guide to regaining your confidence

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Fernando Torres has now scored three goals in his last two matches, including his first of the Premier League season to give Chelsea a 2-1 win over Man City. Though it's a tiny sample size, Torres has shown steady improvement since the start of the season. He no longer looks like he's running in mud and has played more like a seasoned bully than a goth kid with egg salad in his pants.

That's not to say that Torres is now without flaws. He still had a now customary inexplicable miss against Man City, but as Jose Mourinho said after getting kissed by strangers in the stands at Stamford Bridge, Torres showed he can now use his errors to fuel his successes. From the BBC:

Mourinho said: "It was a fantastic performance from Fernando because it was built after an easy miss and that makes it even more valuable.

"He could have been affected for the rest of the game but it looked like that was the moment he said 'I will be man of the match'."

So how does one regain their lost confidence they way Torres has? Just follow these simple steps...

Step 1: Recognize your shortcomings —"The people are looking at me thinking I should do much better and it's true," Torres recently told Chelsea TV. He's not sugar coating anything. He's not in denial. He's owning his predicament.

Step 2: Assert yourself — Scratch Jan Vertonghen's face like a powerful jungle cat, for example, instead of letting Rio Ferdinand drag you around like a rag doll.

Step 3: Ask yourself, "What would Jose Mourinho do?" — If you think the answer is "talk about yourself in the third person and feel the superiority flow through you" then you're on the right track.

Step 4: Realize that other people aren't so great either — Samuel Eto'o and Demba Ba aren't exactly lighting the world on fire and even Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Robin van Persie miss sitters from time to time. Just don't ever compare yourself to Romelu Lukaku. That's just not fair.

Step 5: Look at pictures of puppies wearing human clothes — I'm not sure how this helps one's confidence, but I imagine it's the only use Fernando Torres has for the internet.

Step 6: Steal what's left of Joe Hart's confidence — This is the easiest step.

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Step 7: ???

Step 8: Profit — Just when you're proving that you're reborn, Real Madrid will be looking to spend €150 million on someone who can make up for Gareth Bale's shortcomings and actually play a different position than Cristiano Ronaldo. There's no way it could possibly go wrong.

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Brooks Peck is the editor of Dirty Tackle on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him or follow on Twitter!

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