Of all the ways to tempt a player to a club during transfer season, offering out shirt numbers has always felt like the strangest negotiating factor. Including "x player will get to wear the famous No. 9 shirt" in a professional contract, or even with the fact acting as a gentleman's agreement, seems trivial.
Yet, it is something that seemingly still happens. Shirt numbers are important to players and so, every summer, there is a debate regarding which one a new signing will take.
At Chelsea, many fans will be desperate for the incoming Raheem Sterling to avoid the club's No. 9 top. Worn in recent years by by Alvaro Morata, Steve Sidwell, Khalid Boulahrouz, Fernando Torres, Radamel Falcao, and Romelu Lukaku, the most successful of the Blues players to wear the shirt since Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, nearly 20 years ago, is Tammy Abraham.
