followed by Marc Roberts and Sam Winnall aged 24 The 3 oldest players currently on the books at Oakwell.
Think last season our average age was 21.32 or something, will be younger than that, will probably have the youngest squad in the English footballing pyramid
No, it really, really isn't. It'll be kids playing against men who'll kick them up and down and without a sprinkling of experience on the pitch they'll get battered. They'll learn bad habits too. Johnson and his coaching team can prepare them in training, but without experienced players alongside them guiding them through games they'll get it wrong time and time again. Nyatanga can't do it on his own. Our second oldest player has never played a single league game. Last season Bree broke down with a serious injury after just a handful of starts and a similar amount of sub appearances. Danny Wilson called it before it happened and told the board he would get injured if we carried on playing him. This season we're going to have to play kids against men every week as we don't have any alternatives. And that's before we start talking about how many games we might win with so many untried and untested players. Or, more pertinently, how many games we'll lose. But that really is the least of my concerns because without the protection of some older heads and with a squad so threadbare that still growing lads will have to play every week, I'm more worried about their careers. Alan Hansen famously said that, "You can't win anything with kids." Man Utd went on to win the double that year. However, what is never mentioned is that in the starting line up that day at Aston Villa was Peter Schmeichel aged 31, Brian McClair 31, Paul Parker 31, Gary Pallister 30, Denis Irwin 29, Roy Keane 24 and Lee Sharp 24. Also, Steve Bruce (aged 35), Eric Cantona (29) and Andy Cole (24) played the majority of Premier League games. As did Ryan Giggs (22) who was already very experienced at that time. Alex Ferguson never put a team of kids out. He never selected a team in the Premier League where the majority of them were kids. If he had done, they would have won nowt as Hansen predicted. He blended youth with experience. So no, I don't think it's wonderful that the vast majority of our squad is very young with next to no experience. Quite the opposite in fact.
Good post. Agree with the general principle of what we are doing , but there should be some experience in the spine of the team ... hope the recruiters don't get too carried away with just youth.
