Once up a time there was a number. It was a good little number. He wasn’t too fat or too thin. He he wasn’t too small, or too tall. In fact, he was just right.
He was a useful number. You had to have him if you wanted to call an ambulance or the fire-brigade or the police. In some countries you only needed him once but in others you needed him three times. The Beatles liked him because he was revolutionary. John Lennon had dreams about him.
He was a good football number too. All the kids wanted him on the back of their shirt but most were told ‘You can’t kick a ball lad, you’re going to be a centre-half’. The lucky one might have got him upside down but that was mostly a midfielder’s number back then – usually the slightly fat lad who never looked like he should be able to run all day but always did in training.
Many sporting heroes wore this number with pride and distinction. The number itself became a position. You said the number, you knew the type of player you were looking at. It continued in this happy way for many years, but then something called ‘The Internet’ changed everything.
At first there were just whispers, but they grew louder. Soon people gossiped and eventually felt comfortable enough to discuss it publicly and without any kind of shame. ‘This number is cursed!’, they would cry. ‘Look at the evidence’, and so people did look at this so-called evidence and they agreed with the conclusion.
‘The number is cursed. It is a cursed number!’ they declared. ‘Anyone who wears this number is doomed to fail for it is the number itself that is the problem. There cannot be any other reason for the litany of disaster and doom that has befallen those who wear it.’
The number felt bad, for he was an intelligent number. He knew that he was not cursed because, frankly, curses are dense. Was it his fault that a Fox in the Box with ankles made from balsa wood and dried pine cones was given it to wear? It was not. Was it his fault that a Brazilian who loved only overhead kicks (as well as pies, ice-cream and jellies) wore it on his back? It was not.
The number failed to understand why he was given the blame for a lumbering, clogging oaf snapping in two the leg of a talented Crozilian who had shown it was possible to wear him and score goals and be, you know, good at football. Ignore the studs-up gimp with the touch of a mammoth who almost took the fella’s foot off his leg, and point to his shirt number instead. That’s some good thinking all right.
He understood why people would grow weary with the South Korean lad who was about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike, but the German guy was good … at Instagram. And he scored some belters too, to be fair. But none of it was his fault. He caused them no harm or ill. He was, when it came right down to it, just a number, and he felt anyone who thinks a number is cursed needs to put their head in a toilet for a considerable period of time.
All of which is to say that if Lucas Perez doesn’t reach the heights that we expect or desire, it won’t be anything to do with the fact he is our new number 9. If Shkodran Mustafi doesn’t do that well, will it be because Mathieu Flamini – outraged at being let go and separated from his best mate Mesut – threw the number 20 shirt inside a flaming pentagram and sprinkled it with the essence of his bellybutton fluff before laughing maniacally and then fleeing into the woods to take part in a bacchanalian orgy with a girl called Camilla which leads to the death of an innocent man and changes everybody’s life in ways they could never predict?
No, it will not be that, although I don’t rule anything out when it comes to Flamini. Basically, the numbers aren’t important, it’s the chaps wearing them that count, so it’d be good to see Perez do what he did last season for Deportivo. Not so people can change their minds about a curse – because there is no curse – but because that would be really quite helpful in terms of what we need to do as a football team.
In other news, Jack Wilshere has changed his Twitter bio and said that Bournemouth is the ‘best place’ for him. I’m still not wholly convinced, but there’s plenty of discussion about that on today’s Arsecast. Meanwhile, Granit Xhaka has been talking about his first impressions of life at Arsenal – it’s an interesting read.
Finally for today, Tim Stillman’s column this week looks back at the transfer window and Arsenal’s activity.
Ok, time for this week’s Interlull Arsecast in which I’m joined by James from We are the North Bank (@NorthBankLower) to discuss Jack Wilshere’s move to Bournemouth. Is it the beginning of the end of his Arsenal career, or a real chance to prove his worth to the club? As well as that we chat about the signings of Mustafi and Perez, there’s some wonderful, beautiful silence, a man with a disgusting arm and we go behind the scenes when the cameras stop rolling at Sky Sports on transfer deadline day. And, of course, all the usual waffle.
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Right, that’s about that for this morning. After all the excitement of the week I reckon we’re going to start enduring the lull part of the Interlull, but maybe that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
More from me tomorrow.
