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https://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blog...-a-break-in-the-premier-league-122208406.html
The truth about young players: Why it's tougher than ever to get a break in the Premier League
The emergence of players such as Harry Kane has obscured a depressing truth: it's harder than ever for young, talented players to get a chance to shine in the Premier League, as Ben Lyttleton demonstrates.
What is the collective noun for a group of football analysts? It’s probably a ‘metric’ of analysts, a ‘bias’ of analysts or a ‘KPI’ (Key Performance Indicator) of analysts, because, after spending a day with them at the recent Opta Pro Forum, they were the words I heard most.
The forum’s conclusion was that clubs are gathering more and more data and, in certain cases, acting on its results more often.
In the week that the Premier League negotiated a domestic TV rights package worth over £5 billion – and that's before the foreign rights kick in – it was interesting to see which teams are building for the future and which are living in the present (not to mention which are running away from the past).
One man who understands this better than most is Simon Gleave, Head of Analysis at Infostrada Sports, who has looked at the effects of age on players in the top-flight over the last 40 years.
As Sean Ingle has reported in The Guardian, Gleave has noted an increase in players’ average age over the last 40 years, with the numbers demonstrating a clear trend that young talents find it harder to get opportunities at elite clubs.
Gleave has divided player ages into three categories: 'Talents', for players aged under 24; 'Peak Age', for 24-29; and 'Veterans,' for players aged 30+.
[METHODOLOGY: Infostrada's report on The Ageing Game]
The pattern is obvious. In 2007-08, 26 per cent of all starting players (including goalkeepers) in the top division were Talents. Now that figure is 17 per cent, an all-time Premier League low.
Only 5 per cent of Manchester City’s starting XI this season have been Talents, which essentially comes down to one player: Eliaquim Mangala, probably the one guy who has been most singled out for criticism (and he turned 24 last week).
But how does the City model compare to other teams? Below is Gleave’s table looking at Chelsea over the last four years:
View gallery
.
Chelsea's age distribution (Infostrada)
You can see that the Chelsea team which won the Champions League in 2012 – and finished sixth in the Premier League – was an ageing one. It was the oldest it’s been in the last four years, as every coach since then has looked to reduce the age.
"The ideal is to have the majority of players at Peak Age and to always have one or two talents who can stream into that group as they get older," said Gleave. “If you have too many Talents in your team, you might suffer for a season or two.”
Chelsea’s 25 per cent Talent average – players who were 23 or younger on January 1, 2015 – is almost entirely made up of Thibaut Courtois (22), Eden Hazard (now 24) and Oscar (23), though Kurt Zouma (three starts) is also represented. The fact that the first three are almost regular starters in the league makes Chelsea above average in the Premier League when it comes to fielding younger players.
The benchmarks to denote the averages in the Premier League this season are as follows:
Talents: 17 per cent
Peak Age: 60 per cent
Veterans: 23 per cent
There are some outliers in this group, one of which is Stoke City:
View gallery
.
Stoke City's age distribution (Infostrada)
This season, Stoke have used only one Talent: Marc Muniesa (22). Over the last four seasons, the club’s average Talent in their starting elevens is under 4 per cent. In 2012-13, they did not start with a single player under 24.
“This seems like it was a policy started by Tony Pulis but when Mark Hughes took over, the numbers stayed very close,” said Gleave. “Given the similarity in the numbers between the two, you wonder if this is a club policy.”
The focus is clearly on Peak Age players, rather than Veterans, of which there are only around two per line-up.
There is also a pattern among the teams that pick the most Veterans in their starting line-ups:
Everton 46 per cent
QPR 41 per cent
West Brom 39 per cent
Leicester 32 per cent
Crystal Palace 31 per cent
Burnley 31 per cent
Is it significant that these six clubs are all in the bottom nine of the Premier League? Gleave is not sure but has a theory that even with the advances of sports science, the increasing speed in the game is negating the idea that players can go on for longer.
This data is not as reductive as saying Talents are good and Veterans are not. But the tables can show up club strategies in the manner of Stoke City – and what supporter doesn't want their team to have a strategy?
So which team has the best record at picking Talents? This season it has been Spurs, with Talents making up 41 per cent of their starting XIs. In Tuesday’s defeat at Liverpool, they had six players under 24, with three of them (Eric Dier, Ryan Mason and Harry Kane) English.
View gallery
.
Tottenham age distribution (Infostrada)
The red line from last season indicates that Spurs had a bigger concentration of players aged around 24. The big bump at the end of 2011-2012 season is down to Brad Friedel, then 40, who started all 38 Premier League games that season.
Spurs 41 per cent rate is this season’s Premier League high, but it pales in comparison to Leeds United 1999-2000, which had 62 per cent. The league record, however, is Aston Villa 2012-13, under ex-coach Paul Lambert, with 63 per cent (nearly seven players per match).
Another club with a reputation for blooding young players is Southampton. In their first season back in the top-flight, in 2012-13, they started with 43 per cent of Talents.
The figure this season is down to 25 per cent. That's still above average, with the decline partly down to the sale of Luke Shaw, Adam Lallana and Callum Chambers, and partly because the likes of Morgan Schneiderlin and Jay Rodriguez have grown older.
This drop does not signal a change in strategy – this season the main Talent starters have been Sadio Mane, Victor Wanyama, Nathaniel Clyne and James Ward-Prowse.
With the likes of Matt Targett (19), Harrison Reed (20) and Jake Hesketh (18) still getting a chance, Southampton’s reputation for picking Talents remains safe. And at least they don't have to worry about Stoke trying to buy any of them in the near future.
Ben Lyttleton
The truth about young players: Why it's tougher than ever to get a break in the Premier League
The emergence of players such as Harry Kane has obscured a depressing truth: it's harder than ever for young, talented players to get a chance to shine in the Premier League, as Ben Lyttleton demonstrates.
What is the collective noun for a group of football analysts? It’s probably a ‘metric’ of analysts, a ‘bias’ of analysts or a ‘KPI’ (Key Performance Indicator) of analysts, because, after spending a day with them at the recent Opta Pro Forum, they were the words I heard most.
The forum’s conclusion was that clubs are gathering more and more data and, in certain cases, acting on its results more often.
In the week that the Premier League negotiated a domestic TV rights package worth over £5 billion – and that's before the foreign rights kick in – it was interesting to see which teams are building for the future and which are living in the present (not to mention which are running away from the past).
One man who understands this better than most is Simon Gleave, Head of Analysis at Infostrada Sports, who has looked at the effects of age on players in the top-flight over the last 40 years.
As Sean Ingle has reported in The Guardian, Gleave has noted an increase in players’ average age over the last 40 years, with the numbers demonstrating a clear trend that young talents find it harder to get opportunities at elite clubs.
Gleave has divided player ages into three categories: 'Talents', for players aged under 24; 'Peak Age', for 24-29; and 'Veterans,' for players aged 30+.
[METHODOLOGY: Infostrada's report on The Ageing Game]
The pattern is obvious. In 2007-08, 26 per cent of all starting players (including goalkeepers) in the top division were Talents. Now that figure is 17 per cent, an all-time Premier League low.
Only 5 per cent of Manchester City’s starting XI this season have been Talents, which essentially comes down to one player: Eliaquim Mangala, probably the one guy who has been most singled out for criticism (and he turned 24 last week).
But how does the City model compare to other teams? Below is Gleave’s table looking at Chelsea over the last four years:
View gallery
.
Chelsea's age distribution (Infostrada)
You can see that the Chelsea team which won the Champions League in 2012 – and finished sixth in the Premier League – was an ageing one. It was the oldest it’s been in the last four years, as every coach since then has looked to reduce the age.
"The ideal is to have the majority of players at Peak Age and to always have one or two talents who can stream into that group as they get older," said Gleave. “If you have too many Talents in your team, you might suffer for a season or two.”
Chelsea’s 25 per cent Talent average – players who were 23 or younger on January 1, 2015 – is almost entirely made up of Thibaut Courtois (22), Eden Hazard (now 24) and Oscar (23), though Kurt Zouma (three starts) is also represented. The fact that the first three are almost regular starters in the league makes Chelsea above average in the Premier League when it comes to fielding younger players.
The benchmarks to denote the averages in the Premier League this season are as follows:
Talents: 17 per cent
Peak Age: 60 per cent
Veterans: 23 per cent
There are some outliers in this group, one of which is Stoke City:
View gallery
.
Stoke City's age distribution (Infostrada)
This season, Stoke have used only one Talent: Marc Muniesa (22). Over the last four seasons, the club’s average Talent in their starting elevens is under 4 per cent. In 2012-13, they did not start with a single player under 24.
“This seems like it was a policy started by Tony Pulis but when Mark Hughes took over, the numbers stayed very close,” said Gleave. “Given the similarity in the numbers between the two, you wonder if this is a club policy.”
The focus is clearly on Peak Age players, rather than Veterans, of which there are only around two per line-up.
There is also a pattern among the teams that pick the most Veterans in their starting line-ups:
Everton 46 per cent
QPR 41 per cent
West Brom 39 per cent
Leicester 32 per cent
Crystal Palace 31 per cent
Burnley 31 per cent
Is it significant that these six clubs are all in the bottom nine of the Premier League? Gleave is not sure but has a theory that even with the advances of sports science, the increasing speed in the game is negating the idea that players can go on for longer.
This data is not as reductive as saying Talents are good and Veterans are not. But the tables can show up club strategies in the manner of Stoke City – and what supporter doesn't want their team to have a strategy?
So which team has the best record at picking Talents? This season it has been Spurs, with Talents making up 41 per cent of their starting XIs. In Tuesday’s defeat at Liverpool, they had six players under 24, with three of them (Eric Dier, Ryan Mason and Harry Kane) English.
View gallery
.
Tottenham age distribution (Infostrada)
The red line from last season indicates that Spurs had a bigger concentration of players aged around 24. The big bump at the end of 2011-2012 season is down to Brad Friedel, then 40, who started all 38 Premier League games that season.
Spurs 41 per cent rate is this season’s Premier League high, but it pales in comparison to Leeds United 1999-2000, which had 62 per cent. The league record, however, is Aston Villa 2012-13, under ex-coach Paul Lambert, with 63 per cent (nearly seven players per match).
Another club with a reputation for blooding young players is Southampton. In their first season back in the top-flight, in 2012-13, they started with 43 per cent of Talents.
The figure this season is down to 25 per cent. That's still above average, with the decline partly down to the sale of Luke Shaw, Adam Lallana and Callum Chambers, and partly because the likes of Morgan Schneiderlin and Jay Rodriguez have grown older.
This drop does not signal a change in strategy – this season the main Talent starters have been Sadio Mane, Victor Wanyama, Nathaniel Clyne and James Ward-Prowse.
With the likes of Matt Targett (19), Harrison Reed (20) and Jake Hesketh (18) still getting a chance, Southampton’s reputation for picking Talents remains safe. And at least they don't have to worry about Stoke trying to buy any of them in the near future.
Ben Lyttleton
