He begins with the numbers the players wear on their backs…

Shirt numbers have been the subject of several questions I have received, including one from Brendon Cammell from Johannesburg asking which number has made the most appearances for Chelsea (he suggests no. 1). He also asks for a list of the top few numbers which have made the most appearances.

For answers to these it makes sense to count from the 1993/94 season, the first one when a fixed squad number was allocated to each player in the Premier League. Before that we started with 1 to 11 in each game.

In the 22 Premier League campaigns since 93/94, the no.1 shirt wasn’t used in 2003/04 when our goalkeepers were Carlo Cudicini with shirt 23, Marco Ambrosio with 31, Neil Sullivan with 34 and Jurgen Macho with 35 (although he never played).

So there are only 21 seasons of service for 1 whereas there are eight numbers that have been allocated every season throughout the 22 years of the Premier League. They are 3, 7, 8, 11, 19, 23, 24 and 26.

Another shirt number question comes from Sageidyjunior who wants to know which Chelsea players have previously worn the no. 4 shirt.

It is Cesc Fabregas now of course but going back to the start of the squad number era, in order our 4s have been David Lee, Jakob Kjeldbjerg, Ruud Gullit, Steve Clarke, Jes Hogh, Claude Makelele and David Luiz.

The third answer on shirt numbers is prompted by a question from Julius Macharia from Nairobi. He asks for the highest squad number given to a Chelsea player. That is 64 which was allocated to Milan Lalkovic in 2010/11, although the young Slovakian forward didn’t make his debut. He is now at Barnsley.

Julius also asks which numbers in the normal range have never been worn. All have been used by our players up to the mid 30s.