Chelsea are trotting out their B Team for the Conference League against Gent tonight, with Enzo Maresca once again changing his full lineup.
Someone on Twitter noted something pretty remarkable, or at the very least contrary to expectations. This backup team has an average age of 24.4 tonight. That means it’s younger than the first team, which clocked in at 23.6 in the game against Brighton at the weekend.
It’s really Tosin, Christopher Nkunku and Axel Disasi and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall who make the difference here. They’re all 26 or older. Only Marc Cucurella and Robert Sanchez from the first team fall into that bracket.
It’s another reminder of the crazy overhaul of the squad over the past few windows – the older player in the squad is Tosin, and he only turned 27 a week ago.
Our backup XI is more experienced than our main starting XI. 🤔
– Average age of the XI vs Brighton: 23.6 years.
– Average age of the XI vs Gent: 24.4 years.— Vince™ (@Blue_Footy) October 3, 2024
A curiosity – but one with resonance for Chelsea’s long term plan
It’s just a curiosity really, but certainly a crazy inversion of what you’d expect. Just think back to, say, 2015. The teams Jose Mourinho would have been putting out in the Premier League would have had an average age of something like 27, maybe more.
Then the rare occasion he would use a fully rotated team, you might be looking at 24 – still higher than our current first team.
We wonder what the long term vision will be for this side – will we see the average age rise as the seasons pass, or will there be an endless conveyor belt of sales and arrivals of 20 year olds meaning it’s always kept this low?
Of course the plan is to BUY young players – but is it also to sell them when they hit 25? We doubt many teams which make it to the Champions League final operate that way. Once you’ve got players with the high ceiling, you’ve got to develop them together and let them reach their peak.
