Nine is the number, football is the game

Among many of the clichés swirling around Newcastle United is that they like their number nines up there, citing Jackie Milburn, Andy Cole and Alan Shearer (even Glenn Roeder did well with that assignment – from a defensive position). Throughout the club’s sojourn in the murky depths of the Championship, no player bore the number on his back. Andy Carroll saw it conferred upon him at the start of 2010-11 season, only for him to depart to Merseyside in the next available transfer window. Like the empty chair, this was the empty slot.


Demba Ba’s scoring prowess has made Alan Pardew exclaim that had he known how effective the Senegal international would be, BA would have been a dead cert for the number nine, instead of the current squad number 19. Now, despite claiming that he wasn’t searching for a striker this January in the wake of the breakdown in the move for Modibo Maiga, which seems like expert bluff, Papiss Demba Cissé has become part of the team and if he is three-quarters as good as the other Senegalese Demba, he will have been a worthy addition. Intriguingly, he has been allocated the number nine shirt.

It may seem perverse to sign another striker who will be unavailable for at least another month, but he is an insurance policy and, so as to avoid a potential repeat of the Carroll situation with Ba, Cissé thus has the coveted niner. Whatever comes of the release clause for Ba, whether it is activated in this transfer window (or if seems likely the next) or if the club renegotiate the contract, I imagine that Cissé has a rather firmer contract given that his previous club, the stricken Freiburg, were keen to sell him, allowing personal terms to be ramped up for the player (plus the healthy league position of United being a bonus). Like Arséne Wenger’s early years in north London, it’s another success for Graham Carr (dad to ‘Chatty Man’ Alan) and his excellent scouting network.