English football has an affection with it's old traditions, whether they're good, bad or ugly. Abide With Me at the FA Cup finals. The magic sponge. Iain Dowie.
One tradition that has soldiered on from the earliest days is the numbering of shirts, first used in 1928 in a match between Sheffield Wednesday and Arsenal, with home team wearing 1-11, the away team 12-22. When numbers became more common, they were assigned by position, and continued to do so in the English top flight until the mid 1990s, when squad numbers were introduced in the cup finals of 1993, also between Wednesday and the Gunners (along with names).
Using the classic English system, Arsenal as an example, that'd mean the following line-up:
