Romelu Lukaku has returned to Chelsea this summer after nine years, in a deal worth £98 million.
The five-year deal will see him become the Blues highest earner; the Belgian striker is reportedly being handed the number 9 shirt at the club.
Tammy Abraham previously wore the number, but the Englishman moved to Roma yesterday, making the number available for Lukaku.
The shirt is arguably the most cursed shirt in the club because of the number of high-profile strikers that have won it and failed to live up to the hype that accompanied their signing.
In taking the shirt, Lukaku now joins a list of big names who had underwhelming careers at Chelsea after being handed the number 9 shirt.
Chris Sutton, for example, transferred to Chelsea from Blackburn Rovers in the 1999/2000 season after scoring a decent 47 goals in 130 appearances for Blackburn. But the Englishman ended up scoring just one goal in 28 Premier League appearances while wearing the number 9 shirt.
After Sutton came Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, who wore the shirt between 2000-2004, performing admirably well.
However, ten different players have won the shirt since Hasselbaink and have failed to live up to the club’s expectations.
Excluding Abraham, who rose through the ranks at Chelsea’s academy, and two of the players who wore the shirt as defenders, the remaining seven of these players cost Chelsea more than £150m. However, they could only muster 133 between them over ten seasons, and at that rate are considered failures.
Hernan Crespo, for example, cost the Blues £16.8m but lasted only one season, scoring 25 times. After him, the next big-money move to Chelsea was Fernando Torres, who joined from Liverpool as one of the best strikers in Europe at the time. But the Spaniard could not match his Liverpool numbers at Chelsea and ended up scoring just 45 times in three seasons where he made 175 appearances.
Alvaro Morata, Radamel Falcao and Gonzalo Higuain are other great strikers to have won the shirt but failed woefully in their Chelsea career. And now, although Tammy Abraham did the shirt some justice by scoring 30 times in 79 appearances, the 23-year-old has been shipped out of Chelsea as not being good enough, proving again that the number 9 shirt seems a bit difficult to manage at Chelsea.
It appears to be seen how Lukaku, who has scored a combined 193 goals during spells at Everton, Manchester United and Inter Milan, will fare in his second stint at Chelsea while wearing the cursed number nine shirt.
