In My Life in Football: Goals, Glory and the Lessons I’ve Learnt, Robbie Fowler makes some useful mentions regarding shirt numbers.
Early on in his days at Liverpool, he clearly set out his stall:
“One day, us YTS lads were laying out the first-team kit and I was standing there with Ian Rush’s number 9 shirt, holding it up, staring at it and telling Phil Charnock that one day, I was going to wear that shirt. I was just a kid, starstruck. It wasn’t like I was saying, ‘I am the great Robert Bernard Fowler. This shirt is mine, it is only a matter of time!’ I was just daydreaming out loud, thinking, ‘One day …’, ‘Imagine how it must feel …’, that sort of thing.
“Next thing, Phil’s gone quiet and this shadow falls over the dressing room and there’s Phil Thompson, letting me know in very robust terms that I wasn’t fit to lace Rushy’s boots and I would never, ever be good enough to wear the shirt!”
Not long after that, Fowler would become part of first-team set-up, with 23 his first number – he notes that Jamie Carragher would go on to make it his, but he was the first to wear it.
While there was a suggestion that he was going to be assigned number 12 for the 1994-95 season, any such plans were aborted and Fowler was still number 23 when the Reds reached the FA Cup final in 1996, partnering Stan Collymore in attack, having superseded Rush as the main goal-getter.
Rush was on the bench that day in Wembley as Manchester United beat Liverpool 1-0 – his late substitute appearance his last time to take the field for the club.
It meant that the number 9 shirt was up for grabs Fowler was to be the occupant for 1996-97.
“As a gesture of his belief in me (and, I’m sure, there was an element of the boss throwing down the gauntlet), Roy Evans gave me Rushy’s prized number 9 shirt. Finally, it had happened!
“The shirt that Phil Thompson told me I would never be fit to wear was, for the time being at least, mine. It was a big, big moment for me. That jersey had been worn by legends like Ian St John and Steve Heighway, before Rushy became synonymous with both the shirt and the countless goals he scored in it.
“No player ever owns Liverpool’s Number 9 jersey of course, we’re all just part of a dynasty – but boy, was I proud!”
Fowler’s move was part of a bigger overhaul, as Liverpool manager Roy Evans essentially played the #1to11ify game with the cup final lineup – tidying up the numbers but not altering any incumbent 1-11 player. It meant that, as Rob Jones had switched from the right flank to the left due to a combination of injuries and Jason McAteer’s form on the other wing, number 3 was the only available option for centre-back John Scales while central midfielder Jamie Redknapp was given 11 as Steve McManaman was rewarded with the storied 7.
As is often the way of things, that day at Wembley was the last time those 11 players started a game together. For the opening game of 1996-97, they had eight of the 1-11 and the unavailability of Jones and Phil Babb for much of that season meant that number 20 Stig Inge Bjørnebye and Dominic Matteo (21) saw a lot of game-time.
The impact of Patrik Berger, Liverpoool’s new number 15, made a 1-11 harder while Scales was sold to Tottenham Hotspur in December after just three league appearances as number 3. However, he was replaced by another fair-haired centre-back, Bjørn Tore Kvarme, and the Norwegian was in the line-up when they had their closest effort in the 1-0 win away to Derby County on February 1, 1997 – Bjørnebye for Jones the only discrepancy.
Fowler would remain at Anfield until 2000-01, when he joined Leeds United, for whom he would wear 27, before donning 33, 8 and 7 at Manchester City before a return to his boyhood club in 2005-06.
He would have to wait to reclaim his favoured digit, though: “I was given the number 11 shirt – Djibril Cissé was 9 – but, in all truth, I would have worn number 109 just to play for Liverpool again!” he wrote.
Come the summer, he was able to do what he had done a decade previously. “To complete my renaissance, Djibril left the club and I was able to go into the 2006–07 season as Liverpool’s number 9 – I was home!”
