January. For multiple reasons, the worst of all the months. Among its most depressing features, the transfer window. Which is definitely the worst of all the transfer windows. But the quest for content cannot be stopped no matter how low the tide may sink in rumour bay, and one way to pretend a transfer has a better chance of happening is to pretend that a professional footballer is going to base enormous life and career decisions in large part on what shirt number he might get to wear at a new club.
The availability of ‘dream shirt numbers’ can seemingly make or break a deal and even though that has never, ever happened we’re not going to let that stop us looking at some of those all-important dream numbers that currently sit unoccupied across the Premier League.
Real Madrid also currently have nobody in the no. 66 shirt. Just saying.
Arsenal
First XI available: 1, 10
Other notables: 13, 14, 16, 21
Even now, several decades into the squad-number era, we still feel slightly unnerved by teams not having anyone at all in the No. 1 shirt. Doesn’t sit right. Makes us nervous. Just feels like you’re off to a bad start. The No. 10 shirt is a pretty coveted item pretty much anywhere but at Arsenal sits vacant since Emile Smith Rowe’s departure having enjoyed an eclectic list of previous occupants from the most correct sorts imaginable (Your Dennis Bergkamps, Your Mesut Ozils) all the way to William Gallas. A fine shirt for that new striker they so very obviously need, but at this particular club perhaps not the most desirable.
Understandably, recent arrivals at Arsenal have all been too overcome with respect to take on Runar Runarsson’s iconic number 13 shirt, while presumably similar thoughts about Eddie Nketiah and to a lesser extent Thierry Henry we suppose will explain 14’s ongoing unoccupied status. And 14 being free does absolutely open up your classic ‘dream squad number’ transfer stories regarding Alexander Isak, who wears that number at Newcastle and previously did so at Dortmund.
Meanwhile only a brave man with a remarkable head of hair is going to take on Rob Holding’s old 16 jersey.
Aston Villa
First XI available: 1
Other notables: 13, 16
Seriously, where have all the No 1s gone? Same place as the game itself, we’ll wager. And never coming back. For shame. Especially true in this case because Emi Martinez has actually moved from number 1 to number 23 this season, which is the wrong way round surely. No denying, though, that of the many reasons for changing squad number that might be out there, ‘This is the number in which I won the World Cup’ ranks among the flexier contenders. Fair play.
Villa would appear, like Arsenal before them, to actually be missing two keepers given that 13 is also available in an otherwise pretty solid set of major numbers containing no egregious errors. You can quibble about Ollie Watkins as a number 11 if you must, but that’s about it really.
It’s now seven years since Jed Steer left a 13-shaped hole that simply cannot be filled at Villa, with Calum Chambers the last to don the 16.
Bournemouth
First XI available: None
Other notables: 14, 18, 25
Solid work from a solid club, with only three gaps in the first 25. They do things right on the south coast. Both 1 and 6 could technically be classed as available, mind, with Neto and Chris Mepham out on loan, but it’s a rare c***’s trick from a club to reassign an on-loan player’s number mid-season. The 14 became vacant when Alex Scott very correctly switched to 8.
Brentford
First XI available: None
Other notables: 17
Near flawless work, and something that surely more than makes up for an early FA Cup exit at the hands of Championship strugglers Plymouth. The number 17 is notable for two reasons here; one for being Ivan Toney’s old number and also for being the only unassigned number below 29.
Lucky really for the more click-hungry corners of our nation’s proud football media that Brentford aren’t worth bothering with. Trying to spin 29 as anyone’s dream squad number is a task surely beyond even Reach’s most skilled guffmonkeys.
Brighton
First XI available: None
Other notables: 12, 13
Simon Adingra pounced on the No. 11 with great alacrity after Billy Gilmour’s departure to ensure Brighton retain a full first XI house, while there surely can’t be many clubs who haven’t had a goalkeeper in either 12 or 13 since the 2017/18 season.
Pascal Gross’ lengthy convention-and-superstition-defying occupation of the 13 jersey a huge factor there, of course. We’ve often wondered why it’s historically been accepted that it’s far too risky to have an outfield player wearing 13 on his back but absolutely fine to have a nervous stand-in goalkeeper tempting fate so wantonly, given the relative scale of potential damage each might wreak.
Probably not really worth worrying about, though, is it? In the grand scheme?
Chelsea
First XI available: 9
Other notables: 23
The literal and figurative absence of a number nine was a bit more on the nose last year before Nicolas Jackson completed his journey from figure of fun to adequate Barclays line-leader, and really the eye-catching thing here is how a squad that has experienced unprecedented levels of churn in recent years has ended up with a really quite strikingly organised and sane squad-number arrangement.
If you want to be a complete overthinking pseud prick about it – and we always, always do – one could even make the case that Chelsea’s squad-number tricksiness, whereby Pedro Neto jumped instantly from 19 to 7 when Raheem Sterling left and Jadon Sancho then jumped into the 19 when he arrived and Joao Felix helped himself to Trevoh Chalabah’s 14 while it was still warm, is a microcosm of the way Chelsea’s chaotically assembled squad has performed surprisingly cohesively on the field.
The absence of a 23 is unusual given its place in squad-number lore across sports thanks to its Michael Jordan associations, but is explained here by Conor Gallagher’s late summer move to Atletico Madrid.
In suitably Chelsea fashion, then, they’ve managed to end up with only two prominent numbers unused, but both of them Hollywood show-pony numbers easily parlayed into ‘dream squad number’ antics. More good news here with the discovery that Marc Guehi’s old 44 is currently unoccupied. A subtle transfer hint if ever we saw one, that.
READ: Chelsea agree stunning £68.2m deals and Tottenham sort £12m defender transfer for future
Crystal Palace
First XI available: None
Other notables: 13, 21, 23, 24, 25
Maxence Lacroix sliding into Joachim Andersen’s number five (which he’d literally just that moment himself acquired from James Tomkins) and Eddie Nketiah doing likewise with Jordan Ayew’s number nine is precisely the kind of seamless squad-number game we’ve suddenly just now decided is enormously important to us.
Neat and tidy work there from the Eagles, but they lose points for a baffling and cavernous run of abandoned shirts in the early 20s. Even 22 is technically available with Odsonne Edouard out on loan.
Everton
First XI available: 3
Other notables: 13, 20, 24
The Toffees are currently in their third season without a number three, a shirt that had a brief spell in Nathan Patterson’s possession after 13 years with Leighton Baines. Mason Holgate isn’t currently doing much with his No. 4 shirt either, on loan as he is at West Brom where funnily enough he wears 3. Not that funny is it?
Everton yet another club with nobody brave enough to take on the 13, which may have less to do with superstition in this particular case and more to do with Neal Maupay, who was also the last occupant of the number 20.
Twenty-four might not seem the most auspicious empty jersey, but it’s had some notable occupants at Everton down the years, from Duncan Ferguson on his return to the club in 2000 to Anthony Gordon via David Ginola and Tim Howard among others.
Fulham
First XI available: 4
Other notables: 13, 14, 22
No replacement yet for Tosin Adarabioyo, while the departures of stalwarts Tim Ream and Bobby De Cordova-Reid ended their lengthy associations with 13 and 14 at the Cottage. Alex Iwobi’s move to 17 has left 22 thus far unclaimed.
Ipswich
First XI available: 9
Other notables: 17
Would Ipswich be safe from relegation already had Liam Delap made a beeline for the No. 9 shirt even before Freddie Ladapo’s long-obvious departure was confirmed? Not for us to say, but the answer is definitely yes.
Other than that, though, Ipswich are really solid apart from an odd blind spot around 17 which has been vacant since Keanan Bennetts’ loan spell in 2020/21.
Leicester
First XI available: None
Other notables: 12, 13, 15, 19
Philosophical questions about whether having Danny Ward as your No. 1 is better or worse than nobody at all aside, it’s solid enough stuff from the relegation-battling Foxes despite an above-average smattering of gaps in the teens.
Liverpool
First XI available: 6
Other notables: 12, 13, 15, 16, 22, 23, 24
Despite minimal 1-11 nonsense – you could absolutely quibble about Wataru Endo as 3 and perform some light-hearted banter about Darwin Nunez as 9 but that’s about it – Liverpool are nevertheless a club that boasts the wildest set of squad numbers in the league. Odd, really, for a club where tradition and history are so prominent, but there really aren’t many clubs around that get quite as much use out of the numbers 38 (Gravenberch), 62 (Kelleher), 66 (Alexander-Arnold), 78 (Quansah) and 84 (Bradley) as Liverpool.
It’s only a surprise that there haven’t been articles pointing out that Alexander-Arnold’s dream squad number of 66 is available at Madrid. Or there have been and we’ve somehow managed to dodge them despite our fondness for hate-reading things specifically designed to grind our gears, which would be even worse.
Still the necessary upshot of so many key players in such big numbers means a load of gaps in more customary ones, including the number 23 that once sat on the back of bona fide Liverpool legends like Robbie Fowler, Jamie Carragher and Xherdan Shaqiri as well as Didi Hamann’s old number 16, most recently if only infrequently seen on the back of Marko Grujic.
Manchester City
First XI available: 1, 7
Other notables: 12, 13, 14, 15, 21, 22, 23
The hypothesis that having no No. 1 at all is bad juju is severely tested by the fact City haven’t had one since Claudio Bravo left in 2020 and have, in fairness, done all right during that time.
Still, though, approaching the second half of the season with potentially neither a 1 nor a 2 is surely pushing luck to dangerous degrees. Best keep Kyle Walker until the summer even if his legs no longer respond to instructions as they once did.
Joao Cancelo was never a number 7 but you’d think somebody else might have taken it on more recently, while that run of gaps immediately after the first XI is an unusual quirk.
It comes to a juddering halt at 16, which we’d argue is one of the more storied of seemingly humdrum numbers at a big club. It was Sergio Aguero’s number for his first four years at City, and has been Rodri’s since 2019. If that isn’t somehow enough to convince, it was also Vedran Corluka’s City squad number and here we rest our case.
There will never be another 23 at City, the number having been retired in tribute to Marc Vivien Foe.
Manchester United
First XI available: None
Other notables: 13, 19
Marcus Rashford’s impending departure is going to f*** it up, which is a shame because United currently have one of the most coherent and complete 1-11 line-ups around. Which unless our priorities are entirely askew here surely more than makes up for being marooned in the bottom half of the Premier League.
Fair enough, Mason Mount is a slightly uneasy bearer of the No. 7 shirt, but that’s only because it’s United and that number has such specific potency here. It’s also not exactly new for the current owner to be considered perhaps unworthy of its lineage given that since ot was surrendered by 2009 Cristiano Ronaldo it it’s also been on the back of Michael Owen, Antonio Valencia, Angel Di Maria, Memphis Depay, Alexis Sanches and 2022 Cristiano Ronaldo.
United are also unusually solid beyond 11, too, with 13 and Raphael Varane’s old number 19 the only absences in the first 25.
So fans of ‘dream squad number’ content about Manchester United incomings really do need Rashford to make his move. They don’t even have 66 available to make a bold swoop for Trent Alexander-Arnold, thank you very much Habeeb Ogunneye.
Newcastle United
First XI available: 3
Other notables: 15, 16
Quite rightly nobody has shown the requisite level of disrespect it would require to claim the 3 shirt so soon after it was vacated by Toon legend Paul Dummett, while Harvey Barnes’ summer shuffle from 15 to 11 closed off the only other remaining gap in the first XI.
With all due respect, Barnes feels like a better fit than Matt Ritchie, who had somehow kept an iron grip on the shirt for eight years.
Martin Dubravka’s imminent exit to Saudi semi-retirement will see Newcastle join the ranks of the one-less, but currently it’s a squad list with precious few conspicuous gaps.
Nottingham Forest
First XI available: 2, 3
Other notables: 23
Forest’s whole season is a story of ‘Hey, it might seem an unlikely route to success but it’s working for them’ and so it is perhaps fitting that with Matt Turner on loan at Crystal Palace they cannot call upon numbers 1, 2 or 3 in their unlikely title push. We just thank the squad number gods that Murato leapt into Joe Worrall’s number 4 shirt because the idea of not having any of the first four numbers just didn’t bear thinking about.
Wayne Hennessey re-signing and reclaiming the 13 shirt leaves Forest with no other gaps after those first disorientating few until number 23. It’s a mad list that is definitely the weirdest thing about their season.
Southampton
First XI available: None
Other notables: 25
Southampton having a flawlessly filled squad from number 1 right up to 24 suggests quite strongly that it’s almost in a way the case that squad numbers don’t really matter or have any bearing on teams’ ability to perform on the pitch at all. But that can’t be right so we’ll just move swiftly on.
Tottenham
First XI available: 2, 4, 5, 11
Other notables: 12, 25, 26
A messy and distinctly on-brand effort here from Spurs with five of the first 12 numbers unclaimed and several key players seemingly happy to retain higher numbers rather than move into some prime first XI real estate. Cristian Romero had already moved out of 4 to 17 for his own reasons, while Guglielmo Vicario did at least take on the No. 1 shirt eventually vacated by Hugo Lloris last season.
But there were still no takers for 4, 5 or 11 despite apparently suitable contenders in the likes of Micky van de Ven (37) or Rodrigo Bentancur (30) or Pape Matar Sarr (29).
We’ve mentioned 26 here because it is a number whose first Spurs occupant was Stuart Nethercott and last was Ledley King, which we enjoy.
West Ham
First XI available: 2, 6
Other notables: 12, 13, 16, 22
We say available, but nobody is getting their hands on the West Ham No. 6 these days. It was last worn by Matthew Upson but was retired in 2008 in tribute to Bobby Moore.
We don’t think the Hammers have officially retired 16 in tribute to Mark Noble, but nobody outside sitcom Christmas specials has claimed it since his 15-year occupation of it ended in 2022.
Wolves
First XI available: None
Other notables: 13, 16, 17
No first XI gaps, but there is the prospect of Wolves potentially having three official No. 10s in one season given Daniel Podence had it before joining Al-Shabab in September, at which point Matheus Cunha leapt in and could himself now be on the way.
Beyond that little possible quirk, it’s the fairly common absence of a keeper at 13 as well as a couple of other options in the teens there that should do nicely if either Rodri or Kevin De Bruyne fancy a change of scenery.
