Written by : @samizgould

Our moves in the summer window have excited us as we possess an attacking threat unseen in East London for many a year. The focus was on bringing in younger players with potential, while also being quality enough to be first 11 players or pushing very hard to be. This approach is absolutely what has been missing and takes our recruitment to a new professional level and long-term approach that has been sorely missing. This has got many fans talking about how far we’ve dropped the average age of the squad and the massive difference this makes. But despite the change of approach and the introduction of four younger new players, our average age has barely changed at all.

As things currently stand in the squad we have nine players who are 30 years or older, with three more players in Michail Antonio, Andriy Yarmolenko and Aaron Creswell all due to turn 30 during the season. This means that if as the club are publicly stating that we don’t anticipate making moves in or out in January then more than half of the registered squad of 23 players will be over the age of 30 with 12 reaching the defining age for footballers come seasons end.

At the moment we are the third oldest squad in the Premier League with our average age sitting at 28.4 years old. Only Burnley and Crystal Palace have a squad with a higher average age. This is the same position we had last season but we had a lower average age at 27.8yrs and this increase is due mostly to adding two senior goalkeepers in Roberto and Martin who are both 33. It was only the last-minute sale of Javier Hernandez with Xande Silva taking his place in the registered first team squad that helped us slip down to third. When the Premier League transfer window closed we sat equal second oldest with Crystal Palace. So, despite the widely held belief that we have improved the age of our squad our transfer moves this window haven’t had the impact here that we perhaps hoped for as we have increased our average age of our squad.

It feels like there should be no doubt that our first 11 is definitely younger than its been in the past. Of course, it depends exactly who you select in the team but if you were to use the 11 that played against Norwich our average age was 26.9years. If you compare that to the 11 players who played the most games in each position last season our average age of the first team was 27.3. The only real difference here is Haller 25 replacing the Austrian who shall not be named at 29 (last season) and Lanzini at 26 returning to his rightful place for Snodgrass (at 31 last season) who played more games than the other choices in an attacking central midfield role.

The decision we’ve made to move on older players like Javier Hernandez, The Austrian, Lucas Perez, Andy Carroll and Samir Nasri while looking for younger replacements is exactly what we needed but there is plenty more work to be done. Of the nine current players over 30 only Fabianski and perhaps Mark Noble will be certain starters across the season. Angelo Ogbonna’s form at Centre back has been impressive to start the season but he is still a strong chance to be replaced by Balbuena should his form slip at any point. So, it’s our fringe players where most of our experience sits with Zabaleta, Snodgrass, Reid, Sanchez and of course the two new keepers who add to our ranks and our average age.

With Pellegrini’s confidence in the youngsters coming through the academy and our loan players showing positive improvement next summer will likely see our average age improve.

The move away from signing experienced mercenaries who don’t have East London in their hearts or Claret and Blue in their blood has seemingly improved the squad dynamics with a much more positive start to the season compared to the last two years. But no matter their age all we want is a fully committed team willing to give everything and see just what they are capable of come May.