There’s never any shame in struggling to match up to Manchester City when playing them. They have a very deep squad of expensively procured and fantastic players and are coached by one of the best managers around.
Nonetheless, Liverpool’s performance in the first half of their 2-2 draw with the defending Premier League champions was certainly disappointing.
Talking about that period of the match after the game, Jurgen Klopp expressed his frustration with his team’s performance:
“I’m not sure I saw a lot of games where City could pass the ball that easy through half spaces, so between our winger and our eight, it was constantly 'pff'. So what was the reason for that?”
Klopp’s explanation was that the Reds’ defensive line was too passive, and they remedied the problem after the interval. But what if there was another issue which played a part?
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For the first time this season, the Liverpool manager retained the same starting XI who had begun the previous match. As they had won 5-1 away from home in the Champions League, the men in question were certainly in good form. It’s logical to call upon the most experienced players for such a titanic tussle too.
But was it asking too much considering the average age of the team? Three-quarters of the starting defence were in their thirties, as is captain Jordan Henderson, and both Joel Matip and Virgil van Dijk have only recently returned from serious injuries.
With other key players from the City clash in their late twenties, only 20-year-old Curtis Jones and 24-year-old Diogo Jota from the starting side are in the earlier stages of their careers.
The team clocked in with an average age of 28.8 years old, which made it Liverpool’s oldest line up for a Premier League match this season. Not only that, but it was the joint-13 th oldest seen among the 140 starting XI’s which have taken the field in the English top flight in 2021/22.
Burnley were older on average in their opening five games of the campaign, West Ham United in their first four and Watford have been in their last three.
In the case of the latter two clubs, if we ignore their veteran goalkeepers then their outfields were younger than Liverpool’s for the City game in five of their seven matches with an older overall average.
While this was an extreme example for the Reds, data from Transfermarkt shows that after seven match weeks of this season they have fielded the fifth oldest set of players on average in the Premier League.
In the context of the modern era of English football (since 1992), Liverpool’s average age of 27.2 years old is far from the most aged ever seen. There have been 183 instances of a team putting out older teams across a full campaign in the last 29 years.
However, at the same time the current iteration of Liverpool is the club’s oldest in the Premier League era. As the bulk of the 2021/22 squad have been on the books for several years, they have grown old together as a unit.
In the first two full seasons under Klopp, the Reds averaged 25.6 and 25.5 years old respectively, which made them the second youngest top division teams for both 2016/17 and 2017/18.
The following season, in which they won the Champions League, Liverpool’s average age of 26.2 years old made them only the eighth youngest team in their league. But far more importantly it gave them a lot of peak age players who came agonisingly close to completing a league and European double.
The Reds ended their three decades wait for a league title the following season by putting out teams who were aged 26.6 on average, the seventh oldest in the top flight. They then became the sixth oldest last season (at 26.8) and are now in fifth place (at 27.2).
Of course, we are judging the current crop on a sample of only seven matches. Trent Alexander-Arnold will undoubtedly play most games when fit, Joe Gomez and Ibrahima Konate should get further opportunities while Kostas Tsimikas has not disappointed when deputising at left-back.
Further forward, Curtis Jones will play regularly, while Harvey Elliott had begun to establish himself in the XI prior to injury.
Kaide Gordon may not get much game time in the league this season but clearly has the talent required to feature in the years ahead. The club’s succession planning has not stalled entirely by any means.
And when looking at Premier League games alone, only Chelsea (with 24) and Arsenal (18) have made more starting line-up changes than the Reds (16) have from game-to-game this season.
But if Klopp understandably wishes to persist across 2021/22 with the men who have brought so much success to Liverpool, he may need to consider tinkering with his XI more heavily to protect his somewhat aging squad.
