Michael Owen taps into the power of seven at Manchester United

The forward should feel inspired wearing Old Trafford's most cherished number
Michael Owen has been given the No7 shirt at Manchester United
Michael Owen has been given the No7 shirt at Manchester United. Photograph: Matthew Peters/Man Utd via Getty Images

Sir Alex Ferguson's decision to award Manchester United's No7 shirt to Michael Owen this week was an interesting move – perhaps another step on his road to redemption. Variously described as "iconic" and "prestigious", the shirt number Owen inherited has been the emblem of a long and distinguished line of United's most cherished players, from Johnny Berry, George Best and Steve Coppell back when it was routinely put on the dressing-room peg of the outside right, to Bryan Robson, Eric Cantona, David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo, who established it as a brand in the era when names started to appear on the back of shirts as a marketing exercise.

Only 30 years ago numbering, by and large, still followed the pattern established in the late 1920s based on position. For most of their Manchester United careers, Bobby Charlton and Best would wear the shirt most appropriate to the role they had been given and would shift, sometimes from week to week, up and down from seven to 11.

My first memory of anyone tinkering with it substantially was the Liverpool side of the mid-1970s, who would send out Ray Kennedy to play on the left side of midfield with a centre-half's five on his back and Steve Heighway further up the same flank with a centre-forward's nine. They were also the first team to have a player, Kevin Keegan, who fetishised the No7. Football is full of superstitious folk but he treated his number as a talisman, something he needed to get the best out of him.

With England it took a while for Keegan to establish ownership of the number and it was not until Alan Ball was jettisoned in 1975 that it became his personal property. At the 1982 World Cup, he was excepted from Ron Greenwood's decision to hand out the numbers, goalkeepers apart, in alphabetical order, although much good it did him when he belatedly made his only appearance in the tournament as a late substitute in the eliminator against Spain and screwed his elementary header wide of the post.

The other substitute that night, Trevor Brooking, came on wearing No3 which, for the best inside-forward of the 1970s, looked profoundly wrong. Another anomaly of the alphabetic system was the Argentina midfielder Norberto Alonso trotting out during the 1978 World Cup in the No1 shirt and Ossie Ardiles, the very antithesis of the rugged right-back, in No2. Now, when vanity numbers are commonplace, I wouldn't bat an eyelid at such an oddball scheme, but back then it felt demeaning of a flamboyant player to stick him in a defender's jersey.

That sense of unease was down to stereotypes – that all No11s should be silky left-wingers and all No5s swan-necked centre-backs. It was also about wanting to preserve a sense of order and tradition for a bewilderingly conservative kid who liked things pretty much as they were.

Anarchy truly set in with the Spurs team that won back-to-back FA Cups in 1981 and 1982 with the No9, Tony Galvin, wide on the left, the No2, Chris Hughton, at left-back and the No11, Garth Crooks, up front. A Tottenham‑supporting friend saw it as a symbol of his team's flair. It just made me cringe.

Since 1993, when the Premier League sanctioned squad numbering as a means to flog even more overpriced nylon, anything goes. For a few years there was a charming naivety from British managers about the system. In 2000 David O'Leary, in another of his unctuous homilies about his Leeds team's youth and lack of resources, pointed to the gulf between his side and Milan's by highlighting the fact Francesco Coco wore the No77 shirt. The odds against his team had been so overwhelming, he said, that the opposition could afford to have 77 members in their squad. No one pointed out that Coco was running around with the year of his birth on his back.

There have always been coveted numbers – the legend of the No9, for example, has flourished in Newcastle and since Puskas the No10 is imbued with cachet and mystique. Bill Shankly joked his Preston No4 had otherworldly properties, telling his successor in it, Tommy Docherty, "Congratulations. You are now the greatest right-half in the world. Just put the No4 shirt on and let it run round, it knows where to go".

Some, such as Johan Cruyff's 14, are worn in tribute and others are the equivalent of the rabbit's foot, none more so than Iván Zamorano who, when forced out of the No9 at Inter by the arrival of Ronaldo, added a plus sign between the one and eight of his 18 so as not to offend the footballing fates.

Perhaps seven will turn out to be Owen's lucky number. It certainly beats carrying a horseshoe around in his jockstrap.