Chelsea ‘old’? Apparently not.

- Sir Alex Ferguson has started the mind games at the top of the table early, calling Chelsea “a team in their 30s”, a claim that the new Chelsea manager Luiz Felipe Scolari has been quick to rebuff.
As the old saying has it, though, those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Taking the 16 most-played players from each of the top four sides in last season’s Premier League and calculating the average age of these players shows that Manchester United actually have a very, very slightly older side than Chelsea, clocking in at 27.68 years of age compared to Chelsea’s 27.65. Sir Alex Ferguson’s side also have three players in their top 16 (Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, and Edwin Van der Sar, the oldest of all the players looked at, aged 37 years 8 months) that are older than Chelsea oldest star, right back Juliano Belletti. United do have the edge over Chelsea at the other end of the scale, however; four of their top players (Anderson, Nani, Wayne Rooney, and Cristiano Ronaldo) are under 24 and therefore count as what the PFA would call “young players”, as opposed to just two of Chelsea’s stars (Jon Obi Mikel and Salouman Kalou).
Liverpool were a couple of months younger than the top two teams with an average age of 27.31 years, while Arsenal unsurprisingly live up to their reputation as a bright young team with a mean age of just 25.54, including the youngest star player of the top four in Theo Walcott, just 19 year 4 months old.

- In case you were wondering, the oldest team in the league last year was Portsmouth, with an average age of 29.29 years old, with Blackburn Rovers not far behind. Manchester City were the youngest team, aged just 25.37, though Arsenal, Sunderland and Tottenham all also had teams who less than 26 on average.
The oldest player out of these 320 players was Portsmouth’s David James, who is a week or so shy of his 38th birthday and just a tad older than Edwin Van der Sar and Blackburn’s long-serving midfielder Tugay. The youngest was the Gunners’ Theo Walcott, who at 19 is just a few month older than Derby County’s Giles Barnes.
Aston Villa’s Martin Laursen is the youngest of the Oldest Players by club. He will turn 31 in two days time. Conversely, Fulham’s Algerian forward Hameur Gouazza and out-of-favour Pompey striker David Nugent are the youngest players for their respective sides despite being almost 24 years of age.

- Supporters of the Negroazzurri should rejoice that they have signed young Ghanaian midfielder Sulley Ali Muntari rather than Frank Lampard. Muntari has impressed on an almost weekly basis since joining Portsmouth last year, and still has a great future ahead of him. Muntari should have little trouble adapting to Italian football, having played at Serie A side Udinese for five years before joining Pompey.

John Terry – England captain?

I’ll keep the welcomes very brief here: welcome to my blog!
There. That ought to do it.

– I thought that I should start out with an issue that I’ve had my thoughts on for quite some time: the issue of the England captaincy. Yeah, not exactly a footballing hot potato at the moment, given that England won’t be playing any meaningful matches till September 6th, when we make the trip over to the joke country of Andorra, but one that has been added to by none other than England’s record cap-holder and former captain, Peter Shilton.
It seems to me, though, that most of the press are missing a major point about John Terry; namely, that he often demonstrates a remarkable level of unprofessionalism. We all know about Chelsea’s attitude towards referees, including the FA – the fact that they are bottom of the fair play tables for respect towards referees bears that out. But one particular incident that has always stuck in my mind is when he was sent off in a match against Tottenham a couple of years back for two niggly fouls and went not to the dressing rooms as the rules require, but to the Chelsea bench, where he sat for a few minutes before being dismissed by the fourth official. This just two months after being named England captain. I was amazed at the time that more of the press didn’t pick up on this infraction as they would have done if someone with the reputation of, say, El-Hadji Diouf had done it.
People often cite the Chelsea captain’s passion and motivational skills in his favour, as though these are qualities that the other candidates for the England armband lack. But I defy anybody to doubt Steven Gerrard’s influence after the countless Champions League and FA Cup ties he has turned on their heads, or to question Rio Ferdinand’s leaderships skills after he helped Manchester United to two successive league titles and European triumph. And when was the last time you saw either of those two display the kind of ill temper and disrespect that you wouldn’t expect to see in schoolyard football?
Do we really want a 9 year old to be leading our country to the next World Cup?

- As a Liverpool fan, I share Dirk Kuyt’s excitement at the seemingly increasingly likely prospect of signing Robbie Keane. I must say, however, that it is really only mild excitement, and if they are to challenge for the title anytime soon then the Reds really need to start trying to get truly exciting players in, much as we did with Fernando Torres last summer. If reports of Valencia setting £32m as an acceptable figure for David Villa are true, then I would much rather that we try to push on and sign him than Keane, who is a fairly short-term option at best. I’m sure Gerrard and Torres would rather have Villa on board than Keane, too.

- What are Blackburn thinking, willing to sell Brad Friedel for such a paltry sum? With Scott Carson selling for a reported £3.25m, it seems ludicrous for Rovers to set such a low price on one of the best goalkeepers in the league, a goalkeeper who signs no sign of deterioration despite his advancing years. Still, it’s excellent news for Aston Villa fans.