Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang will wear the number nine shirt at Chelsea after completing his return to the Premier League.
The striker joined the Blues from Barcelona for a £12m fee on deadline day, with Marcos Alonso going the other way, and he has signed a two-year contract at Stamford Bridge with the option to extend for a further season.
It’s a swift return to England for Aubameyang, after leaving Arsenal at the start of the year following a falling out with Mikel Arteta.
He wore the number 14 shirt for the Gunners, and then the number 17 at Barcelona as he did at Borussia Dortmund earlier in his career.
However, Aubameyang has taken on the No9 shirt at Chelsea as the Blues turn to him to provide some much-needed goals to the team.
Thomas Tuchel will be delighted with the decision to hand Aubameyang that number, with the Chelsea boss joking last month that players were avoiding it.
Romelu Lukaku, Radamel Falcao, Gonzalo Higuain and Alvaro Morata have all failed to make an impact as the club’s number nine in recent years, a trend Aubameyang will be hoping to avoid following.
“It’s cursed, it’s cursed, people tell me it’s cursed!” Tuchel said.
#️⃣9️⃣ #AubameyangIsChelsea pic.twitter.com/heVCX5mxQc
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) September 1, 2022
“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.”
