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 The Man in The Shed



22nd March 2022 – Retire the shirt ?

Standing in the Shed watching The Blues rolling over Lille I couldn’t help but ponder how to solve a long-term Chelsea problem – one that goes back many years. How to fix the curse of the number nine shirt ?

In the Abramovich era Chelsea have spent millions of pounds on a variety of centre forwards. The moment they choose to wear that number nine jersey it seems that is the kiss of death to their career. Romelu Lukaku is just the latest to appear to have succumbed to the curse. After a reasonable start he has looked seriously off the pace since returning from injury. OK, we have to factor in “that” interview in Italy but it may require his exit before we really know what was has been going on. The latest outburst from the press about those seven touches against Palace may be the source of the criticism but to be honest, watching the big Belgian even when he first joined us, I was thinking that he wasn’t chasing around much or being heavily involved. The fact that he scored a couple of early season goals kind of shielded him from what is happening now. Perhaps the “experts” should be studying his stats from the Inter games to see how involved he was there.

We all like a trier – Timo Werner has kept the fans onside because he works hard for the team. Even Fernando Torres (never the same player following knee injury at Liverpool) would work hard and bought some goodwill as a result. To be honest I would be happy if Lukaku had4 touches per game if 1 or 2 of those resulted in him scoring a goal.

So back to that shirt number. Luckily for Didier Drogba he loved the number 11 so maybe we retire that number nine shirt, dedicate it to Peter Osgood and move on. Only Tammy Abraham seems to have killed the curse since the days of Gianluca Vialli (with honourable mentions to Jimmy Floyd and Hernán Crespo).

Think Alvaro Morata, Franco Di Santo, Radamel Falcao, Gonzalo Higuain (although I think we can excuse Khalid Boulahrouz and Steve Sidwell as they weren’t strikers).

It is perhaps just as well that against Lille our “number nine” was wearing the 29 shirt. Havertz seems to be the big game player for Chelsea these days so he gets my vote to start in the cup final on Sunday. And even at £97million, Lukaku will have to warm the bench.

We move on. Time to fight for another trophy. Let’s see if we can get past Liverpool on Sunday.


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