Comparative squad age.

[teddy_sheringham_125]

Talk of "averages" often annoys me. Likewise with percentages and ratios. I hear or see reports saying, for example that the risk of a certain outcome might have doubled for a given circumstance. It might be, say the risk of getting some sort of skin cancer from using a certain type of lotion. "DOUBLES" is the headline term used to alarm people. But what if the risk was only 1 in 10 million to start with? So it has increased by 1 in 10 million; big deal. Had the risk of some other similar outcome increased by 10% from 1 in 100,000, the overall increase on cancer figures would have been much more despite the 10% headline. 10 times more by my reckoning.

The devil is always in the detail, and that's the case here as well. The average age of a squad doesn't really say nearly enough about a squad to be of any use in making comparisons about issues such as different club's reliance on youth or development policy towards younger players. To do that, you need much more info or else at very least a much less lazy concept than averages.

I definitely agree with you about your first point, as I find that equally annoying, but using the mean isn't always uninformative, and in this case I think it's pretty valid. Since the variance for age at a football club is usually pretty small (you don't often see many players outside the 18-35 range), and the number of players involved is reasonably big (for a sport), the mean should be fairly representative.

 

[HotspurFC1950]

No. Britons on average have 1.99948 arms. The average Briton in fact has 2 arms.

How many legs ?

 

[HotspurFC1950]

I imagine they are taking the average ages of the registered squads (how else would they decide who is a first team squad player and who a reserve), which is misleading, as this would be the average age of the squad over 21 years of age.

Lots of teams have players that don't need top be registered, thus not included in the stats, yet are in the first team, yet alone squad (e.g. Eriksen, Shaw, Barkley Etc).

Would be interesting to see what the average age of the players who took part in a game for each team is at the end of the season.

Don't have to be registered ? How come ?

 

[Ironskullll]

No. Britons on average have 1.99948 arms. The average Briton in fact has 2 arms.

Hoisted by my own petard there But you get the point yeah?

 

[chrissivad]

Don't have to be registered ? How come ?

They are under 21 at the start of the year so dont need to be included in any 25 man squad.