Manchester City reached a new low on Tuesday night when they threw away a 3-0 lead over Feyenoord to see their winless run stretch to a barely believable six games.
Jamie Carragher says the midfield’s “legs have gone” in an echo of what happened to Liverpool before they found Saudi buyers for Fabinho and Jordan Henderson.
We cited their lack of players in the peak years of their career (defined here as between the ages of 23 and 29) as one of five factors in their failure, but how does that measure up to their title rivals. We have looked at the top six in the Premier League table and calculated the number of peak-era footballers in their 15 most-used Premier League players.
LIVERPOOL: 10 of 15 between 23 and 29
An excellent mix, with Mo Salah, Virgil van Dijk, Andy Robertson, Alisson and Ryan Gravenberch (who will be 23 by the end of the season) the outliers here. This is clearly by design with the club famously reluctant to hand long contracts to players in their 30s, hence Salah’s current game of brinkmanship.
This is quite the revolution from the days of Fabinho and Henderson, with no 30-plus central midfielder starting a single Premier League game for Liverpool this season.
MANCHESTER CITY: 5 of 15 between 23 and 29
Frankly, they’ve f***ed it.
It’s easier to count the players who do fit the remit: Erling Haaland, Manuel Akanji, Ruben Dias, Phil Foden and Jack Grealish, with the achingly average Matheus Nunes missing out because he has simply not played enough football, even in the face of debilitating injuries this season.
There are six 30-plus players among those 15 most-used players and the real kicker is that four of them are being asked to operate largely in central midfield in the absence of Rodri.
And we have had a live reminder this week that Josko Gvardiol is still on 22.
CHELSEA: 10 of 15 between 23 and 29
This is entirely by design, with not a single 28-plus player in the Chelsea first-team squad. All the outliers are at the bottom end of the age scale in Levi Colwill, Cole Palmer, Noni Madueke, Malo Gusto and Romeo Lavia. There’s a real commitment to the bit. And it’s why we backed them to be the next Premier League winners after Manchester City (before we realised they were going to go so quickly to absolute sh*t).
ARSENAL: 13 of 15 between 23 and 29
Bloody hell. Almost astonishingly good squad planning from Arsenal. The only outliers are Thomas Partey – whose contract expires in the summer – and Riccardo Calafiori, who will be 23 by the end of the season.
BRIGHTON: 6 of 15 between 23 and 29
Not an unusually unbalanced squad for a club that tends to lose its best players in that peak bracket and have to future-proof by bringing in younger players. Danny Welbeck, Joel Veltman and Lewis Dunk are the over-age players and you absolutely cannot argue that they have held Brighton back this season.
For the record, the six players in the peak age bracket are Kaoru Mitoma, Jan Paul van Hecke, Pervis Estupinan, Igor, Ferdi Kadioglu and Joao Pedro. We would be amazed if all six are still at Brighton next season, which is exactly how this club is designed.
TOTTENHAM: 11 of 15 between 23 and 29
Another example of skilfully managing a squad into the peak age bracket with only Son Heung-Min on the ‘plus’ side of that range (until Fraser Forster is forced into two months of Angeball), with Destiny Udogie, Pape Sarr and Radu Dragusin on the lower side. It’s not quite Chelsea but there is some real commitment to future-proofing the squad.
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