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Football

09th Feb 2017

Jordan Ayew joins the exclusive club of players who are wrecking football fans’ heads with their squad numbers

What's with this trend of dodgy squad numbers?

Darragh Murphy

What the hell is going on?

Why are footballers insisting on ruining the days of supporters with a hint of obsessive compulsive disorder by choosing completely mental squad numbers?

Midfielder Jonathan De Guzman bizarrely chose the number 1 shirt when he moved to Chievo. Morgan Schneiderlin is currently sporting the number 2 jersey for Everton. Sheffield Wednesday, as a club, went bonkers with their squad list for the start of the season.

And Jordan Ayew, the Ghana international who has just signed for Swansea City, has joined the exclusive club of players that are wrecking fans’ heads.

Ayew is a forward, which makes his decision to sport the number three shirt all the more bizarre as that is a squad number typically reserved for a defender.

To be fair, Ayew didn’t have much choice as the squad numbers at Swansea were pretty much all taken and the 25-year-old seemingly had no choice but to take the number of Neil Taylor, who moved to Aston Villa as part of the deal for Ayew.

“It’s not uncommon for me. I wore it in France when I was on loan at Sochaux,” said Ayew.

“Now I will wear it here, although I didn’t have much of a choice in numbers. But the number is not a problem – it’s more important to be on the pitch and in good shape.”

Not that that explanation helped the football purists come to terms with the unveiling.