No midweek match action today but there is the tenth edition of Ask Statman as Chelsea's club statistician Paul Dutton deals with questions and conundrums sent in by fans.

Chelsea might not be in the League Cup tonight, sadly, but I can commence with a question concerning a player who was a League Cup Final goalscorer for the club.

Nowadays, Roberto Di Matteo is a manager, and one doing well if MK Dons' second position in the League One table is anything to go. He is also the favourite player of Tunji who wants a history of the number 16 shirt, as worn in the past by Robbie.

Starting from the first season when squad numbers were first assigned to one player, which was 1993-94, six players have worn 16.

It didn't have the most auspicious start with Robert Fleck taking it on in the final years of his less-than-prolific Chelsea career. Our Scottish winger David Hopkin followed before the late David Rocastle wore it.

Then it was Di Matteo's turn before a gap, ended by Arjen Robben. It has continued to be a shirt of choice for wingers over the years with Scott Sinclair the current owner.

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I'll deal with some follow-up emails to my last column now and especially my request for help in compiling a list of players who became captains at a club since leaving Chelsea.

To my starter of Gérémi and Frank Sinclair, we can now add Mario Melchiot (Wigan), Adrian Mutu (Fiorentina) and rather famously now, William Gallas at Arsenal.

I'd like to thank Gavin Sirett and Muhammad Zaky for those contributions and also Harry Sideras who has emailed in again with help in listing Chelsea players who have skippered their nations, which previously stood at:

John Terry, Michael Ballack., Eidur Gudjohnsen, Marcel Desailly, Didier Deschamps, Ruud Gullit, Ray Wilkins, Alexey Smertin, Didier Drogba, Michael Essien, Andriy Shevchenko, Dmitri Kharine, Andy Townsend, Adrian Mutu, Vivian Woodward and Tommy Lawton.

Harry's new additions are:

Petr Cech, Claudio Pizarro and two Scotland captains, David Hay and Bobby Evans.

I also received an email about the old picture (below) of one of those past captains, Tommy Lawton, that accompanied the last Ask Statman.

Paul Murray has asked for more information about the photo as the boy in the middle looks like his Battersea-born and raised father.

I'm afraid there is not a great deal of information accompanying the shot in the archive so I can't pinpoint the location. What I can report is that it was taken in early 1948, a short while after Lawton had transferred from Chelsea to Notts County.

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Returning now to the regular topic of attendance figures, Mick Holland has mailed in about a possible lowest home attendance. Mick recalls the tabloids having a field day back in the 1970s over a League Cup crowd of about 5,800 for a visit by Newport County on a cold night.

The clubs have only met once so the game is simple to pinpoint and while the crowd was on the low side, it was greater than Mick's memory - 13,322 turning up. The match was in September 1974 so if it was freezing, it was unusually so.

Mick asks for our lowest ever home attendance which is recorded as 3000 against Lincoln back 1906, soon after the club's birth.

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I've had two more email on games from back in the 1970s.

Stephen Petchey has sent in for help in filling a gap in his memory of his first Chelsea game, back when he was seven years-old. He can't believe seeing a Peter Osgood hat-trick on that momentous day would have left him but has read recently that Ossie did find the net three times in a 3-1 win over Sunderland at home in 1970.

I can inform Stephen that the information is correct so you can tell everyone that your first game, which was on 31^st January 1970, was celebrated with a hat-trick from the great man. Joe Baker scored the Sunderland goal to make it 2-1 before Osgood's third.

Phil Ball writes about a game from later that year. His memory was jogged by the recent 'goal' award in a Leicester City v Watford match despite the ball going nowhere near the goal. Phil recalls a famous Chelsea moment - the goal that never was against Ipswich.

Phil wants confirmation that the scorer was Alan Hudson (pictured below) and some more details.

It was a Division One game on 26^th September 1970, the incident was a 20-yard shot by Hudson that hit the sidenetting and, as there used to be in those days, the stanchion at the back of the net, spinning back onto the pitch.

A BBC newsreel of the game showed this to be the case but inside Stamford Bridge at the time, the goal was awarded and it proved to be the winner.

The 'goal' made it 2-0 with Ipswich later pulling one back. There was a two-minute delay to the game while Ipswich protested but the ref confirmed his decision after consulting with the linesman.

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Bringing it back up to date, Baku Abilov Elnur from Azerbaijan asks a question which must have crossed many a mind a couple of weeks ago.

He wonders if there had been a previous occasion when Chelsea, Man United, Arsenal and Liverpool all failed to find the net - that being the case the weekend of our recent 0-0 draw with Newcastle.

Looking back over the history of the Premier League, during which the idea of a 'Big Four' will have changed, there was one previous set of fixtures when the named quartet were scoreless.

They were midweek games in February 1993 - Man United drawing 0-0 away at Leeds on Monday 8^th having already played two days earlier on the Saturday.

On Wednesday 10^th, Arsenal lost 1-0 to Wimbledon at Highbury while Chelsea 'entertained' Liverpool, the result a goalless draw.

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Speaking of Liverpool, the final question this time concerns a player who would later go on to become an Anfield legend but began his career at Watford.

Max Kelk has been told by his mother that they both saw John Barnes's debut for Watford back in the early 1980s at Stamford Bridge, yet Max has also read that the player's first game was at Vicarage Road.

The game at the Bridge was on 12th September 1981, Chelsea losing 3-1.

That was the first time Barnes started a game for Watford, in other words his full debut. However his first appearance in their team, coming on as a sub, was seven days earlier at home to Oldham.

Max also asks for the date of his first game watching Chelsea which coincidentally was against Oldham, a 3-0 win with Clive Walker scoring twice, Mike Fillery once. The date was May 3^rd 1980.

And there I'll leave it for this time but the surgery will be back before Christmas to take on some more unanswered queries that have already been sent in.

Please keep the questions coming, plus any follow-up comments to the answers above, to statman@chelseafc.com

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