6 Comments

Hammers beating the age barrier

Slowly but surely it’s coming down and down as the Hammers – via Manuel Pellegrini and Mario Husillos – get to grips with what has been a long term problem within the squad – AGE!

The arrivals of Pablo Fornals and Seb Haller has helped the process again and if we take a look at 11 players who are likely to be involved on a regular basis this season things look pretty good.

With Marko Arnautovic , Andy Carroll, and Lucas Perez all shifted the club has got rid of three 30 year olds in one fell swoop and Haller at 25 looks a far tastier proposition.

Golakeeper Lukasz Fabianski inflates the average of the squad a bit at 34 but in outfieed terms we now have the youngest squad at the club for some time.

The eleven we took as being likely starters throughout the season with ages were: Fabianski, 34, Fredericks, 26, Masuaku, 25, Diop 22, Balbuena 27, Anderson 26, Rice, 20, Fornals 23, Lanzini26, Haller,25, Wilshere 26.

That gives the average age of just over 25 and even if you include Noble 32, Antonio, 29 and Snodgrass 31 that only increased the average to between 26 and 27.

A more youthful team means more athleticism and as things stand we are looking in pretty decent shape compared to previous years.

COYI

 

About Hugh5outhon1895

Hugh Southon is a lifelong Iron and the founding editor of ClaretandHugh. He is a national newspaper journalist of many years experience and was Bobby Moore's 'ghost' writer during the great man's lifetime. He describes ClaretandHugh as "the Hammers daily newspaper!" Follow on Twitter @hughsouthon

6 comments on “Hammers beating the age barrier

  1. Hmmm …. if that’s our starting 11 we’re obviously still following the ‘if you score 4, we’ll score 5’ mentality. Skillful going forward but not defensively robust in my view – bit lightweight, not enough steel.

    • I deliberately avoided saying it was Daze if you read. I was giving an example of how the age lvel has dropped

      • I didn’t mean to suggest you thought that was MP’s preferred 11 or even yours. MP claimed we had an unbalanced squad when he arrived and he sought to rectify that. However, in my opinion, we have an unbalanced squad now with too many attack-minded players and not enough defensively-minded options. I think the same criticism was ofter levelled at Arsene Wenger in his later years – his solution always seemed to buy another tricky little midfielder rather than search for a Petit or Viera (admittedly, they are usually in short supply). Last season we all know we played better against supposedly good ‘footballing’ teams than against battling opponents. I can see the same happening again. Man City are good enough to out-play and out-think battlers but we’re not in the same league yet.

  2. “The eleven we took as being likely starters throughout the season with ages ”
    Hugh this is what you quoted. You’ve also left out Yarmelenko at 29. We still have Snodgrass 31,Sanchez 32,Zabaletta 34. We hardly have a young squad. I like Pellegini but you do have a habit of not proof reading your posts and covering up the cracks. I do think Pellegrini likes expierenced players over some of our youngsters. Cullen should be getting game time over both Obiang – wants away – and Sanchez to old,to slow and not PL standard. We need to see if he can handle it at this level.

    • Check it out and let me know mate. Thanks for the criticism. Zaba is in his last year and his inclusion was a result of an automatic contract after completing an alloted number of games. I do not attempt to cover cracks unless they are your cracks and I included both Snodgrass and Noble. I included people – as stated – likely to be REGULAR STARTERS. As for proof reading, there are two of us, one with a full time job doing between 10 – 15 stories a day. It happens. Not as though is’s a paid for service. I think with the others you mention the average age works out at around 28 but I think we can agree it is better than a few years back which is the point.

Comments are closed.