Fw: [itfc] Average age of Town sides

[Eric Piazzoni]

~PZ

*Sent from my phone...please ignore typos*

-----Original Message-----
From: "Sollie, Mats" <Mats....@storebrand.no>
Sender: itfc-b...@debaser.org
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:37:35
To: Ipswich Mailing List<it...@debaser.org>
Subject: Re: [itfc] Average age of Town sides

Thanks for yet another interesting piece of stats, Chris. It would be interesting to compare this graph to the 12-match moving average points won from the games to see if there are any correlation between average age and points won. I'm not implying you should do this exercise, Chris, I'm just saying it would be interesting.... I would guess that there is little, if any, correlation at all.

Mats


-----Opprinnelig melding-----
Fra: itfc-b...@debaser.org [mailto:itfc-b...@debaser.org] På vegne av Chris Rand
Sendt: 23. februar 2012 20:20
Til: Ipswich Mailing List
Emne: [itfc] Average age of Town sides

Hi All

I could not resist this, once I knew it was possible. Thanks to some
*awesome* work from Ralph at Pride of Anglia -
http://www.tmwmtt.com/poa/index.html - we now have the average age of
Town's starting lineups since records began. This really is stuff
which nobody's worked out before. A huge hat-tip in his direction
before we go any further.

Right, here we go. From the Pride of Anglia data, I've plotted the
average ages over the past 10 seasons and produced this graph:
http://www.chrisrand.com/twtd/itfc-average-age.gif
…the dark blue line is a 12-match moving average, which smooths out
many of the anomalies. Don't forget that it's easy to see a massive
swing in average team age with just one change of player: swapping
Ainsley for Ingimarsson, for example, puts a year and a quarter on the
average. But the moving average tells a real tale.

First, the highs and lows. The youngest side Town have put out in the
past 10 years was away at Derby in November 2006, halfway through Jim
Magilton's first season in charge. The lineup of Price, Bruce, Naylor,
DeVos, Harding, Roberts, Garvan, Walton, Richards, Lee and Clarke had
an average age at the time of just 23 years and 134 days. At first
glance, that team doesn't seem exceptionally young to me, but it was.
It contains three 22 year olds, a 21 year old, two 19 year olds and
two 18 year olds. Only Naylor, DeVos and Lee are over 22.

And the oldest team? You probably won't be surprised to learn it was
this season, with the lineup away at Millwall of Stockdale, Collins,
Sonko, Leadbitter, Edwards, Bowyer, Andrews, Bullard, Kennedy, Chopra
and Scotland, at 31 years and 27 days, being the only one in the last
ten years to have an average age over 31.

The graph is interesting. For the first three of Joe Royle's four
seasons, the team's average age climbs steadily from 26.5 to 28.5,
almost as if it's the same team growing older together. Then in
Royle's final season, the average age plummets to 25.5, and continues
to fall through Jim Magilton's first season to a low point in the past
ten years of about 25. For Magilton's second season, a much older team
appears, around 27 years old on average. In his third season, it
climbs higher still, to 28 years old (although again, this would
happen if the same team grew older together).

When Roy Keane comes on the scene, the average age is slashed from
28.5 to 25.5, exactly as happened when Magilton took over from Royle.
Like Magilton, Keane's teams then got even younger, and the average
age headed down towards 25 at the start of his second season.

Then Paul Jewell steps in, and almost instantly the average age
rockets to just below a 10-year high of 28.5 (and don't forget this
was with Wickham in the team!). As we go into the current season, the
average age continues to climb, reaching a 10-year-high moving average
of 29.5 this last Christmas. But as we know, things changed suddenly
again, and the average age tumbled in successive matches immediately
after the recent new year. The average age in 2012 has dropped as low
as a fraction over 25, for the Blackpool home game, which is the
lowest since the home game against Swansea in December 2010 as Keane's
era came to an end. For the last four matches, the current consistent
lineup has had an average age of a fraction over 26, a slight rise
owing to Josh Carson's omission.


--
regards
Chris Rand
Cherry Hinton Blue
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