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Squad age


Albert

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With the half way point of the season coming up fast, I thought it might be interesting to have a look at the average squad age. We mention that our average age has gone down, but by how much. Now, I'm fairly sure I posted the previous results before using the calculation method here, but I'll just run over what is first:

The method for finding the average age of the squad that I use is based on the number of appearances each player makes, rather than just counting everyone used, or everyone that is in the squad. That is, that one 16 year old who came off the bench that one game isn't going to drag the average age down, but that 17 year old who has been ever present will. So it's an appearance weighted average, or really, it's an average age of the average player on the pitch. This takes into account of both starts and substitute appearances using an average value for substitute appearances that I calculated a few years back, although I should probably redo that calculation some day. It's a bit tedious though.

So yeah, here it is, from Nigel's time here, (and half a season with Jewell in charge) here are the average squad ages each season using the age that the players were on the first of August:

2008/09: 25 years, 11 months, 12 days

2009/10: 26 years, 12 months, 18 days

2010/11: 25 years, 12 months, 18 days

2011/12: 25 years, 5 months, 15 days

2012/13: 24 years, 11 months, 8 days

Please note that this season is still in progress, however obvious that is. There is clearly a big drop in average age after an initial increase in Nigel's first year in charge. Also note that no changes in the squad would show here as an increase in the value by one year per year for obvious reasons. It's quite clear that our squad is becoming younger and younger. Also note that the values above may seem a bit higher than others might put this as, this is because it's weighted by appearances, so whilst we may have a lot of quite young players in the squad (as many clubs do) the more experienced players generally get more appearances. Overall, with someone like Roberts in the squad as a regular player, it's quite impressive to see the squad have an average age using this method of only 24 years, 11 months.

It's also worth noting that the trio of Nyatanga (19), Addison (19) and Barazite (18) (all ages as they were on the first of August 2008) played a whole role in having such a low average age in 2008/09.

Other interesting things to come out of the analysis include the number of players used:

2008/09: 39 players used

2009/10: 39 players used

2010/11: 37 players used

2011/12: 30 players used

2012/13: 22 players used

As can be seen, the overall number of players that are being used seems to be dropping. Of course, we aren't even half way into the season yet, and surely this number will go up as the season goes on, but it is interesting and considering the teams more consistent performances over the last two years, it seems that something that seem obvious to some; that a settled squad leads to a more consistent side, may be proving true for us now. We'll see how things turn out later this season though.

Ramble ramble something something...

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please don't make him do it all again, we wont here from him in another 4 months.

Even if there were an error it would take about of the order of minutes to solve.

If you want I can do a dump of my data on the season now rather than at the midway point of the season. Have I really been gone for something like 4 months?

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Even if there were an error it would take about of the order of minutes to solve.

If you want I can do a dump of my data on the season now rather than at the midway point of the season. Have I really been gone for something like 4 months?

do as you please it's a free world.

the only maths i like is multiply 4004 by 2 and looking at the answer on a calculator.

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does it say boobies? if it does i would have done a sum for that but i couldnt think of one.

There are many sums for it. Depending on the number system I could name infinitely many (for reals).

(Here reals isn't slang term, but rather a term for real numbers, a set that contains all numbers that falls within the range negative infinity to infinity including all decimals in between, this is a contrast to other systems such as natural numbers, that is, positive integers {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ...} or integers themselves.)

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