Benteke 5th, Firmino 3rd: Every Liverpool No.9 of PL era ranked on goals scored

When you think of Liverpool number nines, your mind tends to automatically go to the greats of the past – the likes of Ian Rush and Ian St John. So the natural assumption is that this trend of world class number nines continued into the Premier League era. That was not necessarily the case, however.

With the exception of a few greats, the shirt number has been somewhat of a plague since the top flight became the Premier League. Now safely in the hands of Roberto Firmino, a player some may describe as a unique striker in Liverpool’s history of forwards, the number wasn’t always with a top player.

Some Liverpool fans may want to skip to the later stages of this list, and avoid a horrible reminder of those who didn’t exactly have the best of times wearing the number nine jersey at Anfield.

As revealed by TransferMarkt, here is every Liverpool number nine in the Premier League era ranked by the goals they scored in the top flight.

Iago Aspas – 0 goals

Paul Stewart – 1 goal

Michael Thomas – 1 goal

Rickie Lambert – 2 goals

El-Hadji Diouf – 3 goals

Nicolas Anelka – 4 goals

Ronny Rosenthal – 6 goals

Andy Carroll – 6 goals

Don Hutchison – 7 goals

Christian Benteke – 9 goals

Djibril Cissé – 13 goals

Roberto Firmino – 61 goals

Fernando Torres – 65 goals

Robbie Fowler – 85 goals

Try to focus on Robbie Fowler, Firmino and Fernando Torres in the above list. You’ll have a far better time reminiscing about those three than Rickie Lambert, Iago Aspas, and Andy Carroll!

Before Firmino came along and saved the pride of the shirt, the number nine was passed from blunt striker to blunt striker, like some kind of decaying hand-me-down. Under Brendan Rodgers, the shirt went from Aspas to Lambert, before finding Christian Benteke. Those three