The Youngest versus Oldest Premier League players? A question you probably have yet to ask yourself, but that's our job, delving deep into the bowels of football trivia and passing some shiny bright conundrum for you to muse over.
Any player that has laced up a pair of boots in this 2012/13 Premier League season so far, has been considered for selection and here my friends are the results.
Boot Cleaners Albion:
- The average age of the Premier League's youngest XI is 18.64
- Arsenal's Serge Gnarby is the youngest player in the side at 17. Gazzaniga is one of only three players that isn't a teenager, Jones and Duffy being the others
- Southampton's academy shines through with three players (Gazzaniga, Shaw & Ward-Prowse) featuring in the league's youngest team
- Arsenal who are renowned for producing youngsters are solely represented by German winger, Serge Gnarby
- 7 of the youngsters featured are English
- Raheem Sterling has been the most used youngster having started all but 2 of Liverpool's 22 league games
- Irish centre half Shane Duffy forms a decent looking partnership with Phil Jones at the back.
FC Father of four:
- The average age of the Premier League's oldest XI is 35.82
- Brad Friedel is the oldest player on the team at 41, while Ryan Giggs is the eldest outfield player at 39
- Man United, Stoke City, Tottenham, and Reading each have two representatives in the oldest XI
- Ryan Nelsen has played the most game time with 1,702 mins. Delap has the least amount of game time (11 mins) due to an injury picked up early in the season
- Ian Harte and Rory Delap are the Irish representatives.
If anything we have managed to correct the inexplicable non-appearance by Ian Harte in this corner of the internet, but perhaps more than that we may have put at rest a question that will soon be described as perennial, it's quite possibly a win-win.
Scholes and Delap against Sterling and Powell, it's the pin point passing(by hand and foot) against the speedy newcomers..
Cast aside any team or schoolboy loyalty you may have and let there be some clarity.
