Carlos Cuellar knows Aston Villa cannot afford a siesta against Fernando Torres as his Spanish compatriot finally awakens from his Chelsea slumber.

Torres has shown glimpses of recapturing his form recently and finally ended his 151-day goal drought with an FA Cup brace against Leicester City.

The £50 million striker also impressed in Chelsea’s Champions League quarter-final victory at Benfica on Tuesday, setting up the winning goal.

And Cuellar knows the claret and blue backline will have to put their 3-0 defeat at Arsenal behind them and be at their best against Torres.

“It will be a challenge against Fernando Torres because he is a great striker, but it will be one I will look forward to because he is from Spain also,” said Cuellar.

“Fernando is a strong player. Of course, he has had some problems this season but maybe people are starting to see him back to his best.

“For a lot of the time he was not scoring goals but he was still doing well if you watch the games. At times his performances were still really good.

“Now he is finding the net again and he scored two goals in the FA Cup game recently so he will have taken a lot of confidence from that. Hopefully he will not have a great game on Saturday, though.

“I think Chelsea will be a hard game overall, but also a beautiful game to play in. As a team we enjoy playing against the best players and Chelsea have some of them.”

Cuellar insists Villa should draw encouragement from keeping Arsenal’s Robin van Persie quiet and try to relish rather than fear facing Chelsea.

“As a defence we played well against Robin van Persie, so that is maybe one positive,” he added.

“We have to keep our heads up now for the next game against Chelsea.

“We are at home and we still have good confidence and belief in ourselves.

“I think we were doing well until Arsenal. We knew it would be a really hard game for us because Arsenal are such a good side with the players they have got.

“We also have good players and we were doing so well, but we must try to keep our confidence ahead of the game at Villa Park against Chelsea, which will be a big one for us.”