I'm pretty sure some of these lads would want to be thinking big, taking the same old squaddie number you got handed as a child coming to europe isn't a great look. we should all have realised diaz was **** the second he wanted emre can's number. (who wanted some **** cb's number) Macallister should want to grab no 10 for club and country now. how what he is made of.
of course they do. If jame milner was asked to give up no 7 shirt last summer he might well have left rather than done it. No skin of his nose to go elsewhere. He's going to get a signing on fee off Brighton his summer now and a wage as his retirement package. If you asked keita to give up 8 he'd have had kittens and been on treatment table even longer (if thats even possible) If you had asked mane to give up 10 for salah there would have been war. firmino moved to no 9 and salah took 11. this was probably even a bit of a thorny issue for LFC and giving 9 to the lad solved it. I'm fairly sure its all ego on one level or another. pecking order etc.
oh and as an aside. Clyne actually held the no 2 shirt and was out for "reasons" and we bought fabinho who always wears 2 and he had to take 3 cos we wouldn't ask the coke head sorry knee injury suffering player to give up 2. If a footballer isn't ego enough to ask and then not ego enough to insist then he's probably got what it takes to play for us.
I'm not saying that insisting on a particular shirt number is either right or wrong. It just is a thing. Most players are happy to have any number but some aren't.
the bigger the name, the more likely they will want a specific number…..I don’t think we’ll buy anyone that big tbh
I understand it. Whenever I change jobs I demand a certain employee number, otherwise I turn them down.
I agree. For some people those sort of rituals are important. It's just that I'm not superstitious, so from my point of view it's not important. I can see how players might like to become associated with a particular number, and in that case something like Trent's 66 is a good one as traditional 1-11 numbers are 10 a penny.
Liverpool have made “preliminary contact” with West Ham over Declan Rice ahead of potential summer move but Arsenal remain in pole position to sign the midfielder, according to journalist Rudy Galletti. Liverpool make preliminary contact to sign Declan Rice (football-talk.co.uk)
