Average ages of squads fielded by our Premiership managers:

Gullit 26.04
Keegan 27.03
Robson 27.06
Dalglish 27.62

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2001

Answers

Oops, wrong there Softie. Dalglish 37.62

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2001

I think Robson has at least tried to build for the future - his purchases have been predominantly young players like Cort, Lua-Lua, Bellamy & O'Brien. He's also given Hughes, Ameobi and now Bernard first team games. If Cort and Dyer were fit our average age would drop a bit, plus when Rob Lee (and maybe Barton?) moves on we'll lose a few more years. Overall I don't think we're doing too badly on the youth front.

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2001

The average ages by season shows all the trends identified by various posters on here down the years.

Keegan's ageing dreamteam who gradually changed 1 touch football for the direct approach, Dalglish's blend of geriatrics and unknowns, the backroom staff's decision to put the oldies out against Liverpool to embarrass Kenny, Gullit's policy of trying out all the youngsters and leaving out the oaps, the injury crisis last season necessitating the bringing in of the youngsters and this season's youthful buys getting things down to a better level.

Manager	Age	Season
Keegan	26.3	1993-94
Keegan	26.8	1994-95
Keegan	27.6	1995-96
Keegan	28.1	1996-97
Caretaker	27.2	1996-97
Dalglish	27.6	1996-97
Dalglish	27.7	1997-98
Dalglish	26.8	1998-99
Caretaker	27.7	1998-99
Gullit	26.0	1998-99
Gullit	26.4	1999-00
Caretaker	27.7	1999-00
Robson	27.7	1999-00
Robson	26.5	2000-01
Robson	26.9	2001-02

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

Softie, you are truly the King of the stat. I presume these are based on the starting 11? If we lose Lee & Barton and replace them with 24 year olds we'll shave 20 years or so off the aggregate age of the team, which would bring the average down by around 2 years. Throw in Cort for Shearer now and then, Dyer for Speed & we're probably down to around 23 average. Not too shabby at all.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

....as long as we don't include the manager's age as well. ;-)

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

Yes, it's all on the starting 11 - I'll do a seperate one that looks solely at the age of subs to see who has been blooding the young'uns and also what the score was when they came on.

One all the horrendous donkey-work of the data-inputting is done then the fun bit of the data-extraction starts. I like Access, me.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

The problem is that Rob Lee has an effect on these stats. Bearing in mind the number of very young players that Keegan inherited, I'd have thought that his average age would have been much lower.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

Have you input the stats for Ardiles? :-)
What the stats won't show is the (oh dear, footie cliche time) blend of youth and experience. Ie 11 players all aged 26 wouldn't be nearly as positive as say, 6 players aged 19-23 with a few older heads around, especially in defence.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

Yoooooo Anorak man, what will the figure be when Lee is replaced by Carrick and Barton by Griffin and Elliot by Bernard?

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001