I have been in the bad habit of simply shoving data visualizations straight onto twitter, and not even talking too much about them, or if so, conforming to just one or two tweets. You know, the letter-limit of that medium. I keep trying to remember that I do actually have this blog, and I have a Tableau profile, and places to actually put things, and simply link to them via Twitter, so I can actually expand on my thoughts a bit. Today I acted on that reminder.
Here’s an interesting thought, by the way, that came up yesterday as I was driving my nearly-seven-year-old home from school. I used the word ‘remind’, and she asked me what that meant. And I normally try to do more than just ‘use it in a sentence’, but also root-word it a bit. I struggled to think of how to define what the word-part “-mind” came from, so I thought I’d look it up. I went over to https://www.etymonline.com/word/remind and found the following:
1640s, "to remember," from re- "again" + mind (v.). Meaning "to put (someone) in mind of (something)" is first recorded 1650s. Related: Reminded; reminding.
And I suppose that’s kind of how I broke it down for my daughter, I blamed it on old slang (old indeed it seems!) so I think I got it good enough. Anyway, always think about the words you use and where they came from, and all that, especially when talking to your kids. If you don’t help educate them these days, who will? Our kids go to private school, but thanks to Covid, or “the sickness” as we explain it to our wee little ones, that’s only a couple of hours a day right now, and frankly inadequate for their rapidly growing little brains.
Back to the point of this article: I wanted to take a look at how clubs were distributing their minutes so far this season by age, and looking both overall and positionally. I put the whole thing up on Tableau for those that want to play with it:
https://public.tableau.com/profile/robertnhanson#!/vizhome/MinutesPlayedbyAge-20-21TopFive/DB
And this includes all players for all clubs in the Top Five leagues, and data is sourced from https://fbref.com/en/ as usual, where they keep making things nicer and nicer to work with.
I focused primarily on the PL, and also mainly on the ‘big’ clubs as well as some of the clubs that have been surprising:
Big Clubs – Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Spurs
Surprising Clubs – Aston Villa, Everton, Leicester City
I went with bars, just for the easy visual. Here’s the “Overall” chart, with all of the above clubs included:
Things that I notice right off:
- Some clubs seem to be utilizing youth already (ARS, CHE, LEI, MUN, MCI) and that’s a sign both of smart roster management and talent depth allowing it to be possible.
- Other clubs seem to be focused on the “now” (AVL, EVE, TOT, LIV), and that’s not surprising. Villa simply aren’t deep enough to look too far ahead, and need immediate success to try to stay up, Everton and Spurs are managed by veteran managers known for coming in and making immediate success happen, and right now Liverpool and Klopp are simply riding the roster that he’s built to yet more success.
Other details at the club level:
- Aston Villa is very tightly aged, and for the ‘here and now’, that’s almost always a good thing. Almost all of their minutes are in the 22-28 age range, which is normally considered “Prime” and “Nearly Prime”. When you have good talent in those ranges, you are almost always going to see success. What they are missing a bit though is some maturity. Let’s see if that affects them later in the season, when every club goes through a bit of adversity.
- Spurs are also tightly grouped, from 23-28, but also with minutes in the 31 and 33 age spots. Typical Mourinho roster spread. Prime players, some veteran leadership, and with his side being healthy right now, you can see the success they are showing currently.
- Leicester City are a bit unique in their distribution. That 31-34 group is indicative of their previous title run in 2015-16, and they are front-loaded from 22-24, which bodes well for the next few seasons, especially as they have sold a few players along the way.
- Chelsea are showing their quality academy and purchased young talent, along with some retained prime talent and a bit of veteran leadership. In terms of roster balance, Frank’s got probably zero concern right now. It’s more about his growth and maturity as a manager to utilize it effectively; he’s got a full set of parts.
- Manchester City just keep buying more players to plug into place, and keep on rolling. Early hiccups are likely to be resolved in January, with yet more players probably inbound.
- Liverpool have a fantastic core in the prime and nearly prime age ranges, and have shown it over the last few years. Their issue now is one of depth. Key injuries are going to have a serious impact.
- Manchester United has a good solid core group in the 22-27 range, and a bit of veteran leadership. Their roster is definitely solid, and keeps improving each window.
- Everton improved their roster tremendously this summer, and beyond depth issues, are very nice balanced both for this year, and the next few to come in terms of player age.
- Arsenal have a huge spread, with key minutes going from 22 all the way to 33, and at 19 as well. Normally this isn’t a usual sign of success, and not surprisingly Arsenal is struggling. Age clusters help both with peaking talent properly but also with unit cohesion. And it’s clear that Arsenal seem to lack both right now.
I also broke these down by position, using the primary position on the FBREF website (when two are listed, it’s the former I utilized):
These breakdowns are more about roster depth and coverage than anything else, and are nice to dig into I think. I’ll leave the interpretation though to the reader.
Feel free to play with the Tableau dashboard, and swap clubs in and out, etc. Enjoy!