Aubameyang shows signs he could be the man to break Chelsea’s No 9 curse

Immediately after Chelsea’s 2-1 victory against Crystal Palace on Saturday, much of the focus was, quite rightly, on the visitors’ second goal. Conor Gallagher’s 90th-minute winner was as spectacular as it was dramatic and, given it came against the club where he enjoyed a successful loan spell last season, rich in narrative.

However for Chelsea, their first goal of the afternoon was arguably more noteworthy, not only because it got them back into the game following Odsonne Édouard’s seventh-minute opener for Palace but because it came from a centre forward, and specifically a No 9. Mateja Kezman, Hernán Crespo, Fernando Torres, Álvaro Morata, Gonzalo Higuaín: just some of the elite-level goalscorers who have looked anything but while wearing Chelsea’s No 9 shirt during the past couple of decades and, after Romelu Lukaku became the latest to flop in that particular item of clothing, Thomas Tuchel admitted there was a belief within the dressing room that it was cursed.

“Players sometimes want to change numbers but nobody wants to touch it,” the German said in early August, shortly after Lukuku had returned to Internazionale on loan. Yet someone has taken it – a man Tuchel brought to Chelsea just before he also left the club and who showed at the weekend he has what it takes to break this most curious of spells.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang required only 38 minutes of his Premier League debut for Chelsea to score his first goal for the team. The strike may have been controversial given it was set up by Thiago Silva not long after the Brazilian centre-back should have been sent off for a cynical handball, but it was also a thing of beauty, Aubameyang guiding a quickly hit and precise low shot past Vicente Guaita, having