Here's the Premier League table if you base it off of the youngest vs oldest squads
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Premier League football is so relentlessly physical in the modern game that it waits for no passengers, with teams increasingly focussing on youthful exuberance over wily experience.
Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal and Manchester City may all be battling at the head of the Premier League right now, while Sheffield United, Bournemouth and Burnley currently occupy the relegation spots, but is there a correlation between the average age of a line-up in the Premier League and their position in the table?
Well, the boffins at CIES Football Observatory have cleverly crunched the numbers, ranking each of the 20 sides in the Premier League based on their average age, from youngest to oldest.
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The Premier League table based on average age
Position
Team
Average age
1.
Burnley
24.57 yrs
2.
Chelsea
24.95
3.
Arsenal
24.96
4.
Tottenham Hotspur
25.12
5.
Bournemouth
25.72
6.
Brentford
26.22
7.
Nottingham Forest
26.53
8.
Manchester City
26.55
9.
Wolves
26.85
10.
Sheffield United
26.85
11.
Aston Villa
26.96
12.
Luton Town
27.04
13.
Manchester United
27.08
14.
Brighton & Hove Albion
27.16
15.
Liverpool
27.17
16.
Crystal Palace
27.52
17.
Everton
27.54
18.
Newcastle United
27.76
19.
West Ham United
28.80
20.
Fulham
29.28
Clearly, there isn't any discernible correlation over where a team currently sits in the table and the average age of their lineup.
That's epitomised by the fact that Burnley, Arsenal and Chelsea - teams that are currently 18th, 2nd and 11th in the Premier League table - have all put out the youngest sides so far this campaign.
That said, however, Arsenal's young players when compared to Burnley's are a lot more experienced in Premier League football. Large parts of Vincent Kompany's squad are in their debut terms in the top flight of English football, while the Arsenal squad, apart from Jurrien Timber, doesn't feature a single player to have never played in the Premier League before 2023/24.
Arsenal's young squad are flying again this season despite their young team (Image credit: Getty Images)
Indeed, the likes of Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli and William Saliba all bring Arsenal's average age down, despite their vast experience at the elite level of the game.
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Without the 39-year-old Thiago Silva among their ranks, Chelsea could conceivably have comfortably the youngest side in the league. Somehow, Raheem Sterling, 28, is the squad's next oldest player after Silva.
Meanwhile, Fulham, West Ham and Newcastle are all proving that an older squad doesn't necessarily equal poor performance. After all, Fulham, in 12th, are the lowest of the three in the Premier League, while the Hammers and Magpies are 7th and 8th, respectively.
Fulham have the oldest squad in the Premier League (Image credit: Getty Images)
Ryan is a staff writer for FourFourTwo, joining the team full-time in October 2022. He first joined Future in December 2020, working across FourFourTwo, Golf Monthly, Rugby World and Advnture's websites, before eventually earning himself a position with FourFourTwo permanently. After graduating from Cardiff University with a degree in Journalism and Communications, Ryan earned a NCTJ qualification to further develop as a writer while a Trainee News Writer at Future.
