Call me a miserable old so-and-so if you like, but I am getting slightly irked by a growing trend of tinkering with the name on the back of the shirt.
I notice that Oxlade-Chamberlain is now just Chamberlain, and that Alli is now Dele, and I accept that some players may have private, personal reasons for such changes, but please, please, stop it now! Your name is on the back of your shirt so that the watching public have a better chance of knowing who you are. Surely if you are playing well, that’s exactly what you want. It’s not a blank canvas for your personal agenda.
As for nicknames, please make it stop! Javier Hernandez has a perfectly good name without needing to have Chiquitita, or whatever it is, on his back. And Sergio Aguero could save his fans a few shillings by having fewer letters to pay for when they want to buy his shirt.
So, can we please simply have your surname on the shirt. If you want something else on there, change your name by deed poll!
If you have more than one player with the same surname, it is perfectly acceptable to add an initial. Baggies fans will remember the need to distinguish between Alistair Brown (A Brown) and legend Tony Brown (T Brown), although I have always wondered whether Tony Brown’s mum called him Anthony and got terribly confused on matchday.