Liam Delap has taken on the No.9 shirt following his arrival at Chelsea from Ipswich Town, but a look through the club's Premier League history suggests that may not have been a wise move
Liam Delap has taken on the challenge of leading the line for Chelsea - and wearing the club's 'cursed' shirt number.
The Blues announced the arrival of the England under-21 forward on Wednesday evening having triggered a release clause in his contract at relegated Ipswich Town, where he has impressed in the past season, scoring 12 Premier League goals. Delap's £30m fee is fairly modest, but it has taken Chelsea's spending on strikers up to around £550m in the last 22 years.
What's more, Delap has decided to become the first Chelsea player to take on the club's No.9 shirt since the departure of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang two years ago, with the former Arsenal forward leaving Stamford Bridge after a blink-and-you've-missed-it spell of just three goals in 21 appearances.
Aubameyang's less than impressive stint at Chelsea is symptomatic of the struggles experienced by the club's No.9s in the Premier League era.
Prior to Aubameyang the shirt belonged to Romelu Lukaku after he returned to west London for his second spell in 2021. The Belgium striker would struggle at the Blues and scored just eight Premier League goals in 26 matches before he decided to re-join Inter Milan on loan.
Among the other dismal Chelsea no.9s, Gonzalo Higuain also failed to live up to expectations when he made the switch in January 2019. It was Maurizio Sarri's dream signing - a striker he knew how to get the best out of after managing the Argentinean at Napoli to great success.
But the Higuain who scored 91 goals in 146 games in Naples three years prior was a shadow of his former self in England. He netted five times in 19 matches, before returning to Juventus.
Higuain had replaced the outgoing Alvaro Morata, who arrived in 2017 for around £60m. A lot was expected of the ex-Real Madrid star, who managed 15 goals in his first season. Morata even tried changed his shirt number to 29, but things got worse in his second campaign as he scored just five Premier League goals.
This was all after Radamel Falcao tried to take on the reins despite his disastrous year at Manchester United. He arrived on loan with the idea of making the move permanent from Monaco in 2015. Struggles with his fitness and the pace of the game saw him restricted to just 12 games, netting just one goal.
Fernando Torres, Franco di Santo, Mateja Kezman and Chris Sutton are amongst the other players to struggle with wearing the No.9 shirt at the Blues over the years. Tammy Abraham is arguably the only player who has impressed donning that jersey in recent times as he struck 18 goals in his first full season at the club, before being frozen out.
The shirt has also been worn by some surprise names during the Premier League era, including midfielder Steve Sidwell and centre-back Khalid Boulahrouz, players whose place in Chelsea history pales into insignificance compared to Gianluca Vialli and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, who wore the shirt to great effect either side of the turn of the century.
Former Chelsea boss and current England manager Thomas Tuchel once delivered his verdict on the shirt, saying: "It’s cursed, it’s cursed, people tell me it’s cursed!"
"It’s not the case that we leave it open for tactical reasons, or for some players in the pipeline that come in and naturally take it. "There was not a big demand for number nine, when like players sometimes want to change numbers. But, surprisingly, nobody wants to touch it.
"Everybody who is longer than me in the club tells me ‘ah, you know, like he had the nine and he did not score and he had the nine and did also not score’. So now we have a moment where nobody wants to touch the number nine."