The Relative Age of Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City

Pep Guardiola recently selected his joint-youngest Manchester City side. How does the relative age profile of the City, Arsenal and Liverpool squads look?

Most of the trivia which emerged from Liverpool’s recent 2-0 win at Manchester City related to Mohamed Salah’s latest record setting feats. One less obvious nugget that was arguably of greater interest was this:

“The average age of Manchester City's starting XI in this game was 25 years and 68 days - their joint-youngest in a Premier League match under [Pep] Guardiola.”

BBC SPORT

It’s a statistic worth digging into as that isn’t an absurdly young team by any means. Eight clubs in the top flight have started a younger XI at least once in 2024/25, with every single Chelsea team selected by Enzo Maresca fitting the bill. Guardiola began the match with three players in their thirties, bringing two more off the bench. The City rebuild has begun but they don’t merit a Pep’s Pups style nickname just yet.

As was recently assessed on this site, the age balance of the Liverpool squad, particularly in midfield, is in good shape. Such things can improve relatively quickly, in one transfer window, even. The Reds proved that with their combination of recruitment and player exits in the summer of 2023.

An issue back then was the heavy use of Fabinho, who - per the below chart - was a 29-year-old who had played the career club minutes of someone seven years older. Having previously looked at Liverpool’s squad in terms of age, it occurred that reviewing it alongside their contemporaries at City and Arsenal via this data could determine how old in playing terms each roster is. It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage.

However, players at top clubs have all accumulated a way above average total of minutes. It quickly makes sense why; if roughly a third of clubs qualify for Europe, then two-thirds of players inevitably play markedly less football. The big clubs also expect to go deep into continental competitions, increasing the burden. Even Arsenal, occasionally.

As such, we’ll disregard the relative age chart to focus on the club playing minutes of the squads at our three clubs of interest. Based on starting XI’s, the Reds have been the fourth oldest side in the 2024/25 Premier League, with the Cityzens seventh and the Gunners 14th. The data for career minutes played tells a different tale.