The data is clear - Squads with no experience don't win titles

They love data so much, then pay attention to THIS data!

Having finally watched the entire 90 mins of the Brighton game, I share a lot of the criticisms others have made so well elsewhere.

But the biggest one of all for me was the clear lack of leadership and experience on display. People were blaming each other, waving hands at each other, heads down, no one taking responsibility.

This isn’t Chelsea Football Club, for starters. It’s just not.

And its not what a serious team/squad looks like.

Myself and Simon have been blowing the trumpet for years on the subject of experience, and its more true than ever. So I decided to find actual data which backs up this argument. There’s plenty.

Our “football genius” (according to him) co-owner Behdad Eghbali and his “football genius, best in class” (according to Behdad, them and no one else) Sporting Directors seem to think it is, and in time, they’ll become leaders and come good.

But that’s not how it works.

Young players at big clubs, expected to win now (not Borussia Dortmund, no, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, the clubs Chelsea SHOULD be competing with), gain experience, learn a winning mentality, learn how to deal with set backs, learn how to grow as players, as much from more experienced players as they do from actually playing.

This isn’t just speculation, its a fact. Data shows it. Let me show you.

The average age of Chelsea’s current squad is 23.9.

The average age of a PL winning squad since 1992, is 26.8.

As you can see there’s quite a significant difference there.

The ‘youthful’ Chelsea squad which won the Champions League in 2021 had an an average age of nearly 26. It had Olivier Giroud, N’Golo Kante, Jorginho, Antonio Rudiger and Thiago Silva, all experienced players with leadership qualities.

Below are the average ages of the last 8 PL Champions squads, going back to the last Chelsea PL win in 2016/17. So the last 8 seasons, a pretty good metric.

2023/24: Manchester City: 25.0 years old

2022/23: Manchester City: 27.8 years old (treble winners)

2021/22: Manchester City: 27.0 years old

2020/21: Manchester City: 26.1 years old

2019/20: Liverpool: 26.6 years old

2018/19: Manchester City: 26.4 years old

2017/18: Manchester City: 26.0 years old

2016/17: Chelsea: 27.0 years old

The average age of the Liverpool squad currently topping the league is 26.4. They have some proven elite players and winners with experience and leadership qualities in key positions - Mohammed Salah, Virgil Van Dijk, Allison Becker - alongside a lot of young talent.

Arsenal’s squad, currently 2nd in the Premier League, has an average age of 26.8. Again, there’s a lot of young talent but also more established players. Midfielder Declan Rice is 26 and a leader, centre back Gabriel is 27, goalkeeper David Raya is 29, Jorginho is 33 and Ben White is 27.

Newcastle, in good form and top 4 contenders, have an average age of 27.9, and Nottingham Forest, a good side challenging for top 4, an average age of 26.

That’s all the evidence you should need. In fact its more than enough.

I’d also add all the squads who won PL titles had a healthy mix of youth and experience. They had leaders, winners, proven players, some of who had won things, alongside the young talent they had. None of them were a squad of kids who had played together with no experience or leadership around them for a few years.

Ironically the greatest Chelsea team of all time, 04/05 season, won the league with an average age of 23.9, the same as our squad now.

But there was a HUGE difference.

John Terry and Frank Lampard, for example, had spent 3 years working and playing with Marcel Desailly, Gianfranco Zola, Graeme Le Saux, Jimmy Floyd Hasslebaink, Emmanuel Petit & Frank Lebeouf, and learned from them all. Had freedom to make mistakes. So their development into their prime came with experience around them, and both players still acknowledge the importance of some of those players for their development even now.

Also that Chelsea squad had Claude Makelele, a 31 year old who’d won everything at Real Madrid. Our current squad has no one like this. The only one we had, Thiago Silva, left last summer.

Also back then, football culture was different. Players were men at 23/24. Not to mention Lampard became a first team regular at 17 at WHU, around more experienced players, so had 5 years experience around proven players before he even joined us. JT had been playing for Chelsea for 5 years by 2004 too, around a lot of experienced players.

Likewise the United team who won the double in 1995/96 with “kids” had leaders and winners like Steve Bruce, Gary Pallister, Peter Schmeichel, Eric Cantona as experienced players, a young-ish Roy Keane who was a born leader, and even Ryan Giggs had 5-6 years experience at that point. So they had experience, winners and leaders around them.

Basically, recent history especially, but history generally, tells you you need a squad with an average age of 26/27 to win the PL title and do it consistently. The clubs who win the Champions League tend to have a squad who is pretty experienced, and a balance of youth and experience.

There’s also a stat I found from CIES Sports Laboratory, saying that the median age of champions in the five major European leagues in the 2010’s was 26.5 years old.

Even young teams who win things, have had experienced players either in the squad or who have been at the club whilst the young players developed. Proven, experienced, winners, or players who are already the finished article, with leadership qualities.

Liverpool signed James Milner for this reason. They signed finished article players in key positions like Allison and Virgil Van Dijk, their biggest money signings under Klopp, and they completed their team and they won the league.

Jose Mourinho brought back Didier Drogba in the summer of 2014 as a squad player, to provide experience and leadership, and Chelsea won the league.

Behdad and our Sporting Directors, all with zero days experience working at a giant football club prior to 2022, think they know better than all the data I’ve shared above.

They are clearly betting on waiting until our squad gets to 26 years old in 3 years for us to be title contenders and potential CL winners. Even then its a huge risk when they have no experienced players to guide them or support their development. I’m also not quite as sure all of our squad will wait that long.

Also its ridiculously unfair on young players to ask them to carry the team themselves over a whole season. It does them no good at all and you can see how that pressure is telling on them now.

If we signed some proven elite players, finished article players in their prime with leadership qualities, maybe we’d not have to put the weight of carrying our team on inexperienced players. Maybe then we’d be able to rest them or take them out of the team just to take pressure off them, and those players could guide them. This what happens in normal successful teams.

When Eden Hazard joined us in 2012, we still had Lampard, JT, Ivanovic, Cech, Ashley Cole, all there to help him integrate, help him understand club culture, adapt to the PL and take the pressure off him.

Our current squad have no one to help them do this.

Oh, sorry, no, we have Marc Cucurella, who’s never won a club trophy or anything with Chelsea, Reece James, who is injured half the time and isn’t vocal, Trevoh Chalobah, who will be gone in 6 months, and Tosin Adarabioyo, who has, checks notes, never won a major trophy.

That’s not remotely the same.

We have no pure 9, no elite GK, no commanding CB, and arguably no pure 6 despite £1.4 billion spent over 6 windows, and no leaders, no proven winners still in their prime, almost no experience, with tons of players we now need to move on who’ve flopped. According to Behdad Eghbali and themselves, this means our Sporting Directors are world class and doing a great job.

But of course that’s nonsense. This is not a squad set up to win.

Right now we resemble Borussia Dortmund, not Real Madrid or Manchester City. Which is embarrassing.

We’re basically a bunch of kids playing good football together, who get close and may even get CL football, but never seriously compete for the major honours (I mean the Premier League and Champions League trophies).

I don’t know how many more ways I can say this which will be clear:

You cannot create a winning squad without good experience, leaders or winners.

I hope they heard that. I hope that wasn’t discomforting, but its so frustrating this glaringly obvious factor has been actively ignored for over two years.

Behdad Eghbali and the Sporting Directors need to get this concept into their skulls. It’s SO obvious to anyone who remotely follows football and studies successful clubs and teams. If they genuinely don’t see it, quite frankly they shouldn’t be working in football, because everyone else knows this. Like, everyone.

If they, with their combined ZERO experience of winning, or building winning squads, think they know better, all I can do is laugh.

If they think they know better, they should go tell Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho, who helped build multiple title winning and CL winning squads (Jose arguably built the core of our 2012 winning squad too, to be honest). They should ask them what they think of trying to win the big trophies with no leaders, no winners, and no experience. Fergie and Jose especially would literally laugh in their faces.

This doesn’t mean I don’t believe in the project by the way. I

In fact, totally the opposite.

I’m happy to have 20/21 young players in the squad to build and develop together long term for sustained success. That’s a GREAT idea. I believe in that.

But you need those 4-5 players between 24-26 who have good experience, are top players, leaders and winners. It literally does almost no damage to the youth-centric approach to do this. One maybe doesn’t even need to be a starter.

The data is in, the evidence is clear, there is literally no debate to be had on this subject.

Keep with the same approach it will take at least 3 years, if you sign a balanced and strong squad (already failed in that regard with £1.4 billion btw), to be title challengers. And there’s no guarantee either, no data to say this approach actually works. It’s taking a massive risk with the clubs money and time.

And if they think players like Cole Palmer are going to be happy to scrap for top 4 for 3-4 more years - maybe getting it, maybe not - before even challenging for the league, potentially winning nothing and stay here, they’re living in cloud cuckoo land. Palmer loves it here and is committed, but top players ultimately want to be challenging for the big honours every season, and playing Champions League comfortably, every single season - and big clubs WILL eventually try for Palmer if we keep on fluttering around the top 4 without certainty and not winning trophies.

I’m really tired of educating alleged, self appointed experts on the literal basics of building a successful squad. This is not rocket science. It doesn’t take any qualifications to know how to do it, just a working knowledge of football and what successful teams and squads are made up of.

Just one look at the data, the average ages of winning teams, tells you all you need to know - and NONE of those squads were 25 young players who all developed together, all of them had proven elite players, leaders and winners in their squad to help the young players develop.

The owners love data, maybe they should look at the data, the history, which supports their approach. The fact is there is none. You can’t measure intangibles like good experience, leadership directly, individually on a spreadsheet, but the eye test (and even some data) shows these things actually matter. Behdad and the sporting directors are the only people who seem to disagree.

Let this silly baseless idea go, and sign some proven, elite players, leaders, winners, in key positions.

It’s not rocket science, it’s obvious.

The Score