Can Podolski break the curse of the number 9 shirt?

Arsenal announced their squad numbers yesterday, revealing that new signing Lukas Podolski has taken the number 9 shirt from Park Chu-Young. The number 9 shirt hasn’t been a pleasant one to wear for many Arsenal players in recent years, or if it didn’t effect their performance, they still are looked back on as bad for one reason or another. I will go through Arsenal’s no.9’s since Alan Smith left the club in the mid 1990’s.

Paul Merson: Merson ended his Gunners career with 99 goals, one short of a century. He became addicted to alcohol and drugs and also was sold to Middlesbrough by Arsene Wenger in 1997. He had featured regularly for Arsenal in the 1996/97 campaign and was offered a new deal by Wenger. Merson was offered double his wages at Arsenal and took the step down into what is now called the Championship. I think Merson wouldn’t have had long left even if he did sign a new deal at Arsenal that summer. With his drinking and drug problems as well as enjoying a bet quite often too, he wouldn’t have been Wenger’s type of player. The fact he’s English doesn’t help him in that criteria either!. Merson didn’t wear no.9 all of his Arsenal career, so it is tough to include him in this ‘curse’.

Nicolas Anelka (Le Sulk): Anelka arrived at Highbury aged 17 from PSG for a fee of £500k. The young Frenchman burst onto the scene in the 1997/98 season. With Ian Wright injured, Anelka was given his chance. He scored his first Arsenal goal in a 3-2 win over title rivals Manchester United. He played a big part in Arsenal winning the Double that season, netting Arsenal’s second goal in their 2-0 win over Newcastle in the 1998 FA Cup Final. After picking up the PFA Young Player of the Year Award the following season after another impressive year in front of goal, things turned sour. Anelka (and his brother, who was his agent) demanded more money to stay at Arsenal, after the club lost both their FA Cup and Premier League crowns to Manchester United, who went on to win the Treble. The Anelka saga went on all summer. The fans hated him after he refused to play for the club again and had his heart set on a move to Real Madrid. If that failed, he wanted to join Lazio. Anelka eventually got his dream move to Madrid in the summer of 1999. Anelka is believed to have cost Real £23.5m, a massive return on the £500k investment by Arsene Wenger two years earlier. The move may have been a blessing in disguise though. Arsenal signed two new forwards in the summer of 1999, one went on to become the clubs leading goalscorer and the other features next on this list!. So you can guess that he wasn’t a success, given the title of this piece. The point is, Arsenal may not have signed Thierry Henry if Anelka hadn’t have left the club. Anelka also never seemed to settle anywhere. His list of clubs reads: PSG, Arsenal, Real Madrid, PSG (again), Liverpool (loan), Man City (not anything like the City of present day), Fenerbahce, Bolton, Chelsea and Shanghai Shenhua, where he is currently a player-coach. And yes, rumour has it, he isn’t too happy in China either, having fallen out with the fans… surprise, surprise!.

Davor Suker: Suker arrived at Highbury in the summer of 1999, following the departure of Nicolas Anelka. Coincidentally, Suker arrived at Arsenal from the club that Anelka was joining. The two deals were separate and the fee Arsenal paid for Suker was believed to be around £3.5m. Suker was the top scorer at World Cup 1998, but it’s fair to say that Arsenal signed him towards the end of his career. There’s no doubting the Croatian’s ability, he was a fantastic player at his peak and was useful in his only season at Highbury. He wasn’t able to put up the numbers that he did for Real Madrid or anything like what we had seen the previous summer at the World Cup, so it was lucky that Arsenal bought a man named Thierry Henry that summer from Juventus, who netted 26 goals in his first season. Arsenal also had Dennis Bergkamp at the club scoring goals, so Suker not scoring as many as Wenger may have hoped didn’t prove a disaster. He scored 11 goals in 39 appearances for Arsenal, 24 of which were as a substitute. Once Henry had settled in England and started scoring on a regular basis, Suker was warming the Arsenal bench. Suker’s last appearance for Arsenal was in the 2000 UEFA Cup Final in Copenhagen. He came on as a substitute with 5 minutes left of extra-time to try and find a winner. After no goals in normal and extra-time, the game went to a penalty shootout. Wenger trusted Suker with the responsibility from the spot, the Croatian stepped up first for Arsenal in the shootout. Suker missed. His miss gave Galatasaray an advantage as they had already scored their first penalty. Ray Parlour scored Arsenal’s next penalty, but Patrick Vieira also missed his spot kick. The Turkish side were 100% accurate from the spot and won the shootout 4-1 leaving Arsenal trophyless for the second year running. Suker moved to West Ham in the summer of 2000, but failed to get regular football there, scoring 3 times for the Hammers in all competitions. He then moved to 1860 Munich in 2001 and stayed there for 2 years, retiring at the end of the 2002/03 season.

Francis Jeffers: After Arsenal lost the 2001 FA Cup Final to Liverpool, Thierry Henry said that Arsenal needed a “fox in the box” to partner him up front. Wenger listened to him and snapped up Francis Jeffers from Everton for a fee of £8m. Jeffers had an impressive career at Everton and Wenger had signed one of the hottest young prospects in English football at the time. However, his career at Arsenal was plagued with injuries and he only scored twice in his first season at the club. Jeffers made his biggest impact in the 2003 FA Cup run. He scored two goals in Arsenal’s 5-1 win over non-league side Farnborough Town and another against Chelsea in the quarter-finals. He started every game in the run to the final (including a 2-0 win at Old Trafford and both games against Chelsea), but was injured for the Final, just like he was for the 2002 final. He won his one and only England cap in February 2003, scoring in England’s 3-1 friendly defeat to Australia. Jeffers clashed with Phil Neville in the 2003 Community Shield and got a red card for kicking out at him. He was then loaned back to Everton for the 2003/04 season but failed to impress and also fell out with David Moyes. He was back at Arsenal for their 2004 pre-season, but was sold that summer to Charlton for £2.6m. Again he failed to find the form of his first spell at Everton and was loaned out to Rangers in the summer of 2005. Jeffers was sent back to Charlton in December, after his performances were deemed not good enough for the SPL (and that’s saying something!). Alan Curbishley let his contract wind down and he was let go by Charlton in the summer of 2006. He then moved to Blackburn but was sent to Ipswich on loan where he impressed. Ipswich tried to sign him permanently, but the two parties couldn’t agree personal terms. He eventually moved to Sheffield Wednesday in the summer of 2007 for £700k, where he failed to impress once more. Jeffers was released by The Owls in the summer of 2010. He was then given a trial by then Premier League side Blackpool, but failed to earn a contract. Later that year he moved to Australia, signing a 10 game guest contract with the Newcastle United Jets. He was very popular amongst the fans there despite only scoring once, he provided a lot of goals for the team. He then left to join SPL side Motherwell in February 2011, where he scored twice and was released in the summer. He returned to Australia with the Jets in October 2011 and scored 4 goals in 25 games in his second spell there. The last I heard of him, he was training with Tranmere during their pre-season and hoping to earn a deal there.

Jose Antonio Reyes: Reyes arrived at Arsenal in January 2004 from Spanish side Sevilla as one of the hottest prospects in world football. His fee in the end was around £10.5m, but had clauses been met, he would have cost about £17m (a club record fee). The day after he signed, Spanish football experts got onto the radio and stated that Arsenal had just signed a player that could be there for many years to come, leading the team to many trophies. In his second appearance for the club, a League Cup semi-final against Middlesbrough, he scored a bizarre own goal that clinched Middlesbrough’s place in the 2004 Final. However, the Spaniard made Highbury erupt later that month by scoring two goals against Chelsea in an FA Cup tie, to turn the game around and win 2-1. An equaliser against Portsmouth and a winner away to Fulham helped keep Arsenal’s unbeaten dream alive in the league.

In the summer of 2004, Reyes had an impressive pre-season, bagging hat-tricks that gave Arsenal fans hope that he and Thierry Henry could form a deadly partnership up front for many years to come. Reyes netted in every one of Arsenal’s opening 6 games of the 2004/05 season. The goals then dried up for Reyes. He scored in October in a win over Charlton at Highbury, but his next league goal came in February 2005. He did get a couple of goals in between, one against Rosenborg in the Champions League and another against Stoke in the third round of the FA Cup, but something had changed from the man that was scoring goals for fun at the start of the season. It all appeared to go wrong when Arsenal lost their unbeaten record at Old Trafford. Reyes had been on the receiving end of some rough tackles from the Neville brothers and he was kicked to shreds that day. You could also state that after Spanish manager Luis Aragones made racist remarks to Reyes about Arsenal team-mate Thierry Henry, that their relationship on the pitch wasn’t quite the same as it was. You could tell from body language and in celebrations that something was different. In February 2005, Reyes was the victim of a cruel Spanish radio prank, in which the caller pretended to be the president of Real Madrid and Reyes said in the call that he was homesick and wanted to move to Real Madrid. In May 2005, Reyes became only the second player in FA Cup Final history to get sent off after he was dismissed for a second bookable offence just before the end of extra time.

The following season saw Reyes struggle for goals again, but he was assisting a lot of goals. He also played a big role in Arsenal’s Champions League run which saw them reach the Final in Paris. Reyes was only a substitute that day and came on when Arsenal were 2-1 down. In the summer of 2006, Reyes was linked with a move to Real Madrid again. He indicated that he didn’t want to play in the Champions League qualifier against Dinamo Zagreb because that would have made a move to Madrid less likely due to being cup tied. On transfer deadline day in the summer of 2006, Reyes was sent out on loan to Real Madrid for the 2006/07 campaign, with Arsenal getting Brazilian Julio Baptista in exchange on loan for the season. Reyes’ finest moment in Real colours came in the final game of his loan spell. He scored two goals in Real Madrid’s come from behind victory to seal a famous title win for Real. Reyes was expected to sign for Real Madrid that summer, but he moved to their city rivals Atletico instead. When he was sent out on loan in the 2008/09 campaign to Benfica, it was believed his time at Atletico was coming to an end, but when he returned, Quique Flores, who coached him at Benfica the season before, was the new manager at Atletico. He won the Europa League in 2010 after Atletico beat Fulham in the Final. Later that year, he scored in the UEFA Super Cup win over Champions League winners Inter Milan. However in 2011/12, after a positive start to the season, he fell out of favour with Atletico’s new manager and in January 2012 he returned to Sevilla on a permanent basis.

Julio Baptista: Arsene Wenger tried to sign Baptista from Sevilla in the summer of 2005 but the Brazilian chose to join Real Madrid instead. A year later when Real Madrid wanted Jose Antonio Reyes on loan from Arsenal and Baptista hadn’t had the best of first season’s in Madrid, Wenger asked if he could take the Brazilian nicknamed “The Beast” on loan for a year in exchange for Reyes. Wenger finally got his man when Reyes completed his loan move on deadline day in 2006, despite Baptista claiming he wanted to stay in Spain. Baptista found goals hard to come by in his only year in London, scoring his first goal in a Champions League group game against Hamburg in November 2006. Baptista had shown flashes of promise up until then and the big man had finally delivered a goal. His league form however wasn’t so good with just 3 league goals in 24 appearances. He saved his best form for the League Cup though, incredibly scoring 4 goals in an incredible 6-3 win over Liverpool at Anfield. He made himself very popular with the Arsenal faithful after scoring twice in a 2-2 draw against Spurs in the first leg of the semi-final. It should be noted that he also scored an own goal that day, but having been 2-0 down, his two away goals were much appreciated by the fans. In total, The Beast scored 10 times for Arsenal in 35 appearances. Whilst it wasn’t the season we were all hoping for from him, being a man of that build he should bully defences, he did leave us with some good memories of him, particularly those nights at Anfield and White Hart Lane in the League Cup. He returned to Madrid in the summer of 2007 and spent another year in the Spanish capital before moving on to Roma in 2008. He met Arsenal in a Champions League tie in 2008/09, featuring in both games. He squandered some great opportunities during normal time but scored a powerful penalty in the shootout. Roma lost 7-6 to the Gunners on penalties, but Baptista was very respectful to his former club in interviews since. In 2011, Baptista signed for Malaga and had a very impressive first half a season with the club. Malaga qualified for the Champions League for the 2012/13 campaign, but a lot of their money that helped them to sign players like Baptista, is now gone, which has lead to Arsenal signing Santi Cazorla this summer.

Eduardo Da Silva: Eduardo arrived at Arsenal in the summer of 2007 from Dinamo Zagreb. He has the honour of being the first player to score a European goal at the Emirates Stadium, having scored for Dinamo Zagreb in a Champions League qualifier the season before. Eduardo made his debut against Blackburn in the league in August 2007. Later that month he scored his first goal for Arsenal in a Champions League qualifier against Sparta Prague. He continued to score goals in the Champions League, scoring in both games against Sevilla that year. He also had goalscoring success in the League Cup, scoring twice against both Sheffield United and Blackburn. Eduardo had a good run in the team over the Christmas and New Year period. He scored his first two goals in the Premier League in a 4-1 win over Everton a few days after Christmas in 2007. On New Year’s Day he continued to find the net, scoring Arsenal’s first goal in a 2-0 win over West Ham after just 72 seconds. He then scored in an FA Cup tie at Burnley early in the new year and also set up Nicklas Bendtner for the second in a 2-0 win. He then provided goals for the next few games and scored a lovely goal in a 3-1 win away to Manchester City. He provided a further assist the following game against Blackburn and it appeared as though Eduardo had found his feet in England. Wenger once said it appeared as though he had finally found that ‘fox in the box’ talked about by Thierry Henry earlier in this piece.

On February 23rd 2008, Eduardo suffered a broken left fibula and an open dislocation of his left ankle following a horror tackle by Birmingham’s Martin Taylor. The injury was so horrible that Sky Sports, who were broadcasting the game live, decided not to show the replay. Arsenal were pushing for the title up until Eduardo’s injury. They managed to get themselves into a 2-1 lead in the last minute when they gave away a penalty, which was converted. Birmingham had stolen a point. Captain William Gallas kicked the advertising boards and sulked on the pitch. From that day onwards, Arsenal’s title challenge fell apart.

Eduardo made his first-team return nearly a year after the injury in an FA Cup 4th round replay against Cardiff City. He scored two goals, one from the spot on an unforgettable night at the Emirates. The reception Eduardo got was fantastic and truly deserved. He then captained the side in the next round of the cup against Burnley. Eduardo scored a beautiful goal in a comfortable win for the Gunners. He made his Premier League return on the first game of the 2009/10 season, scoring the sixth goal in a 6-1 win over Everton. Eduardo was caught up in a diving  debate after Celtic claimed he dived to win a spot kick against them in a Champions League qualifier. Eduardo went on to take the penalty and score it, which angered Celtic more. After originally being banned for two games after the dive, the ruling was overturned after Arsenal appealed. It proved to be crucial, as Eduardo scored the winner in a 3-2 win over Standard Liege in one of the games he would have been banned for. Despite scoring goals upon his immediate return to first-team action, goals unusually became harder to come by for Eduardo in 2009/10, scoring just 7 goals in all competitions. He looked as if he had lost the finishing touch that he had shown before the injury. If Eduardo was through on goal, one on one with the goalie before the injury, he scored every time. When he came back, he just couldn’t do it as often. Eduardo was a clinical finisher and if he hadn’t suffered his horrific injury I have no doubts that he would still be at the club.

In the summer of 2010, Arsenal signed Marouane Chamakh on a free transfer from Bordeaux. With Robin Van Persie a regular in the side at the time and Chamakh believed to be his ideal partner up front, along with the likes of Nicklas Bendtner and Carlos Vela at the club too, Eduardo knew he would be at the very best 3rd choice striker at Arsenal in 2010/11.  In July 2010, Eduardo moved to Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk for a fee of  around £6m. He returned to the Emirates Stadium later that year, when the Ukrainians were drawn in the same Champions League group as the Gunners. Eduardo came on as a substitute at the Emirates and he received a standing ovation from everybody in the crowd. He scored a consolation goal that day for Shakhtar in a 5-1 defeat to Arsenal. When he scored, the Arsenal fans rose to their feet to cheer Eduardo’s goal, showing what a popular figure he was during his time at the club. I remember saying before that match “I want Eduardo to score but Arsenal to win about 4 or 5 goals”. I got my wish in this case. Eduardo was on the scoresheet again in the return game, but this time it was the winning goal in a 2-1 win for Shakhtar. He refused to celebrate his goal that day out of respect to his previous club.

Eduardo is often tweeting now about Arsenal and you get the impression that he loved his time at Arsenal and would love to come back one day. He is 29 now though and the chances of Wenger signing a player he deemed not up to it anymore a couple of years back are highly unlikely. He will remain a very popular man at the club though, as Arsenal fans know that for a brief while, they saw a fantastic player in Eduardo. I must admit, I just thought that it was a freakish coincidence that the no.9 shirt was unlucky at Arsenal, but when Eduardo got injured that day at Birmingham, you start to believe it’s cursed a little.

Park Chu-Young: Arsenal signed (then) South Korean captain Park Chu-Young from Arsene Wenger’s old club Monaco in August 2011, a move that upset French club Lille. Lille had Park penned in for a medical and was on the verge of signing for them before he heard of Arsenal’s interest. Park didn’t show up for the medical and he didn’t answer the then French champions’ calls. Rumours had spread that Park was on the verge of a move to Arsenal and the story broke out about him ditching Lille at the last minute. It also came out that in two years time, Park would have to go back to South Korea to fulfil military commitments in his homeland. He was given the no.9 shirt, which gave fans the indication that at some point he would be figuring in the first-team. Park made his Arsenal debut in the 3-1 League Cup win over Shrewsbury Town last September. The following month he scored his first Arsenal goal in the next round of the League Cup in a 2-1 win over Bolton Wanderers. I was at that game and I will give him credit, that was a lovely goal. It appears as though I may have been lucky enough to see Park score live for Arsenal and even play for Arsenal, as neither of those have happened often in his year at the club. And for those of you who haven’t seen him at all anywhere, I’m not making him up, he does exist. After his goal against Bolton, Arsene Wenger said Park would get his chances in the first-team and that he had been giving him time to settle in, hence why he hadn’t played much up until then. He started in the Champions League goalless draw with Marseille in November and went on to play in the League Cup quarter-final later that month, almost scoring early on in a 1-0 defeat to Manchester City.

With Robin Van Persie’s goals helping keep Arsenal in contention for Champions League qualification, Park found it more and more difficult to get in the team, given the formation Arsenal were playing, with the one main striker. Park came on as a late substitute against Manchester United at the Emirates in January, fuelling speculation amongst Arsenal fans that he was purely a commercial buy and would sell shirts / get new fans in South Korea. If Wenger wouldn’t trust him in any other Premier League game, why would you throw him on against Man United, even if you were searching for a winner. Park couldn’t even get a game when Arsenal were strolling to a 7-1 success against Blackburn last season, with Wenger bringing on fans favourite Thierry Henry instead. Marouane Chamakh, who hasn’t had a good game since about November 2010, was always brought on instead of the Korean. Park deserved a chance. He always went away on international duty and scored. He recently had a good Olympics too, finding the net at London 2012. The move effected his career though. He was stripped of captaincy of the national team, lost his place in the team too for a while and was unpopular back in his country because he got out of military service in 2013 to pursue his football career.  Park’s last appearance to date was another late substitute appearance, this time against AC Milan in the Champions League. To me this shows that the theory of him being a player that would gain popularity in South Korea and sell shirts there is true, just like Arsenal’s signing of Junichi Inamoto in 2001, who wasn’t a bad player, but sold shirts in Japan, sold tickets at Highbury and barely played a game for Arsenal.

Park is unsurprisingly unhappy at Arsenal and it is more likely than not that he will leave the club this summer. He was stripped of his number 9 shirt before this weekend’s game against Sunderland, which is now occupied by Lukas Podolski. Park now has number 30 at Arsenal. Whether he’ll ever wear it for the club, I couldn’t tell you. His signing was a complete mystery though and I genuinely feel sorry for him. I won’t say anything bad about Park because I genuinely believe he’s a good player that has been treated unfairly. Whether he would have been good enough to be a regular at Arsenal, I don’t know. All I do know is he was worthy of more appearances than he got last year and he can’t possibly be any worse than Chamakh. He played a lot less than Chamakh last year and got as many goals as he did (1). Plus if you don’t play club football all year, have probably the most depressing year of your entire life and still manage to do well at the Olympics and score whenever he is called up by his country, regardless of opposition, he isn’t a bad player.

Lukas Podolski: Podolski arrived at the club this summer from FC Cologne, who had been relegated from the German Bundesliga in 2011/12. He tried his best to keep them up, bagging an impressive 18 league goals for the relegated side. Add to that an impressive 44 goals in 101 caps for Germany at age 27 and Podolski has the potential to break this curse. It should be noted though that he moved to Bayern Munich in 2006, a significantly bigger club than Cologne and after 3 disappointing years in Munich, Podolski returned home to Cologne. An impressive debut in the friendly win over his former club in which he scored twice left Arsenal fans drooling at the prospect of Podolski playing at the Emirates this season.  He didn’t have the greatest tournament at Euro 2012, but still scored 1 goal in the tournament, his goal coming against Denmark in a 2-1 win for the  Germans. He looked to be lacking a bit of match sharpness yesterday against Sunderland, but that would be because he only had 1 game with his new club in pre-season. I genuinely believe Podolski has what it takes to break the curse of the number 9 shirt, but then again, so did many of the names on this list and for one reason or another, they didn’t break the growing curse. We all know he’s a class player and what he is capable of, now we just have to cross our fingers and hope that nothing bad happens and he can beat the curse that has haunted Arsenal’s no.9’s for about 15 years or so now.