By David Butler
Last week the Sky Sports News reporter Gary Cotterill visited Norwich City's club shop as canary fans flocked to have their new strikers name and number 9. printed on the back of their shirts. Ricky Van Wolfswinkel was shortened to v.wolfswinkel and cost £17 to print along with his number. The breakdown of this cost was £4 per number and £1 per letter. The dot between the 'v' and the 'w' in his name must have been considered a 'letter'.
Ricky is not however the most expensive player in the Premier League to have printed on the back of your shirt. If we were to assume Norwich City's cost structure for printing names and numbers is uniform across the Premier League, the table below shows the most expensive players to get on the back of your shirt.
Last week the Sky Sports News reporter Gary Cotterill visited Norwich City's club shop as canary fans flocked to have their new strikers name and number 9. printed on the back of their shirts. Ricky Van Wolfswinkel was shortened to v.wolfswinkel and cost £17 to print along with his number. The breakdown of this cost was £4 per number and £1 per letter. The dot between the 'v' and the 'w' in his name must have been considered a 'letter'.
Ricky is not however the most expensive player in the Premier League to have printed on the back of your shirt. If we were to assume Norwich City's cost structure for printing names and numbers is uniform across the Premier League, the table below shows the most expensive players to get on the back of your shirt.
West Ham fans would have to cough up the most for their Finnish goalkeeper Jussi Jääskeläinen due to the diaeresis used above the a's in his name (with each dot costing a pound!). Everton's goalkeeper Mason Springthorpe comes in second while more househould names (and probably more profitable ones) like Chelsea's Azpilicueta and Mancherster City's summer signing Fernandinho come joint third, with many others, at £19.
Its hard to find a bargain and you'd be fooled if you thought Ba (Chelsea), Ki (Swansea), Ibe (Liverpool), Aké (Chelsea), Fox (Norwich), Fox (Southampton) or Maurice Edu (Stoke) were the cheapest as all of these players have a squad number with two figures. West Ham fans may think they also have the cheapest name in their new signing Răzvan Raț, who has been handed the number 8 shirt but on close inspection, you will see his name is made up of four 'letters' when you include the cedilla (the grammatical attchment that looks like a comma below the t).
The 'best' option to go for (making an unfair assumption that all clubs charged the same price for their shirts) would be Mancherster United's Patrice Evra and his number 3 at £8. The Premier Leage Actim Index ranks him as the 8th best performer in the 2012-2013 season and with this name length and number combination he'd probably be the 'best' buy. If however, you could spare an additional £4 you could always upgrade to Gareth Bale on your Tottenham shirt or if you wished to stick to the Irish nationality, Damien Duff and his number 16.
Its hard to find a bargain and you'd be fooled if you thought Ba (Chelsea), Ki (Swansea), Ibe (Liverpool), Aké (Chelsea), Fox (Norwich), Fox (Southampton) or Maurice Edu (Stoke) were the cheapest as all of these players have a squad number with two figures. West Ham fans may think they also have the cheapest name in their new signing Răzvan Raț, who has been handed the number 8 shirt but on close inspection, you will see his name is made up of four 'letters' when you include the cedilla (the grammatical attchment that looks like a comma below the t).
The 'best' option to go for (making an unfair assumption that all clubs charged the same price for their shirts) would be Mancherster United's Patrice Evra and his number 3 at £8. The Premier Leage Actim Index ranks him as the 8th best performer in the 2012-2013 season and with this name length and number combination he'd probably be the 'best' buy. If however, you could spare an additional £4 you could always upgrade to Gareth Bale on your Tottenham shirt or if you wished to stick to the Irish nationality, Damien Duff and his number 16.
Maybe there was someone else but from what I can remember, Hull's Vennegoor of Hesselink (20) who played during the 2009-2010 season must have been the most expensive. At Norwich's cost structure and a squad number of 29, he would have been priced at £28, just over £10 less than the new Hull City shirt at £39.99! As for the cheapest ever, all I can think of is players with three letter surnames. Newscastle's Rob Lee and Tottenham's Ruel Fox both wore the number 7 and if they were lining out today would have been priced at £7, a proper bargain!
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