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Sky Sports tries to make Fernando Torres and Andriy Shevchenko feel bad

Sky Sports tries to make Fernando Torres and Andriy Shevchenko feel bad

Whenever a foreign player moves to the Premier League, there's always talk of how they will need time to get acclimated to the unmatched power and speed of it. As if nothing short of spending a year in a NASA space shuttle launch simulator could possibly prepare anyone for the unimaginable difference between the Premier League and anything else masquerading as professional football.

Well, Diego Costa responds to this notion with a defiantly uncaring shrug. Since joining Chelsea from Atletico Madrid, he has scored seven goals in his first four Premier League matches — including a hat trick in Saturday's 4-2 win against Swansea. Obviously the transition has been about as taxing as putting on pants before having a pizza delivered.

Of course, scoring goals for Chelsea hasn't been easy for every pricy striker of the Roman Abramovich era. Andriy Shevchenko and the recently shipped out Fernando Torres are the two examples that immediately come to mind, so Sky Sports put together a handy graphic that shows just how much better at scoring goals Costa has been.

Seven goals in just four matches puts the 25-year-old Spanish international 39 games ahead of Torres' pace and 37 games ahead of Shevchenko's. He's even 14 games ahead of club legend Didier Drogba's pace. Given this, Costa's £32 million price tag seems like a bargain so far when compared to the total of £80.1 million that the club spent to acquire Torres and Shevchenko.

The other worldly passing of fellow new addition Cesc Fabregas, who has a league-leading six assists, has certainly helped Costa's rapid acclimation. But even taking his exceptional supporting cast into account, Costa's start to his first season in a challenging new league has been nothing short of incredible. He's the first Chelsea player to score in each of his first four matches since John Meredith in 1928. 1928!

And just to make everything that much crueler on Fernando Torres, a sprained ankle kept him from making his Milan debut against Parma, which turned out to be an absurd goalfest that Milan won 5-4. 

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Brooks Peck

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