Manchester United has most sustainable squad in the big-5

[sglowrider]

Based on the criteria of age, length of stay and remaining contract duration, we have conceived a Sustainable Squad Management rating (SSM). For each player present in the squad, we have multiplied the number of years spent in the first team of the employer club (limited to eight) with the number of years under contract remaining (limited to five), and have divided the total by the age. The result thus obtained for each player was multiplied by the percentage of domestic league minutes played.

By adding the values for each player of a team, we end up with an indicator reflecting the level of sustainability for a squad. Although it varies with each match and transfer, this indicator allows us to compare strategies pursued by teams to build up their squads. It also gives a foretaste of the results that clubs can hope to obtain in the future without major changes in their policies.

From this point of view, Manchester United fans can be relatively confident in the ability of their team to qualify without too much difficulty for the group stage of the Champions League over the next seasons, and eventually lift again the Premier League trophy. Ranked just behind Manchester United despite having far fewer financial resources, the Basque clubs Real Sociedad and Athletic Club constitute perfect examples of sustainable squad management.

https://football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/mr/mr63/en/

 

[Dante]

Wow. Murtough works quick.

 

[Amarsdd]

some difficult-to-understand statistics saying United might be doing something good? OP get ready for a barrage of shit coming your way.

 

[RashyForPM]

You look at our top 4 competitors. City, Leicester, Pool and Spurs have ageing squads, with average ages of 26.1, 26.4, 26.8 and 27 respectively. Older than ours anyway. We have the 3rd youngest squad in the league at 25.6.

Then, we need to consider the quality of the young players in our squad. There are many already established as first teamers who have shown more than glimpses of brilliance, who you’d expect to see in there for years to come. Personally, for the next 5 to 6 seasons at least, I firmly believe that Dean, AWB if he improves his technique, Maguire, Shaw, Bruno, Rashford and Greenwood will make up the core of the first team. That’s a good group to rely on.

So, while there may be question marks over Ole, he still has this current squad in 2nd, sometimes looking amazing, sometimes looking dreadful. Add a few players to the core that we already have like a young CB, Rice, Sancho etc, and we could be challenging for and winning titles soon.

 

[Mike Smalling]

Thought this would be about the carbon footprint of the squad.

 

[UNITED ACADEMY]

Wow. Murtough works quick.

Murtough previous job was related to our academy and the woman teams so technically this was bit of part of his work but the most influence one obviously Ole and his coaching staffs.

We spent the money on good age players like Bruno, Maguire, Bissaka, James, VDB, Diallo and etc. And also how him and his coaching staffs improve and develop our players like McTominay, Shaw Rashford and etc. This is something what people (who don’t appreciate the progress we made under Ole) couldn’t see. The re-structure and rebuild of the squad, progress is not just about points but also the squad and we have better squad now for long term than when we were under Jose. @SAFMUTD

 

[Siezard]

Can talk stats all you want but most important thing is to actually win trophies.

 

[elmo]

Doesn't really mean anything other than us having a young squad which plays a lot of minutes compared to the older players in the team.

Alternatively it can also mean that we are bad in bringing in new players that can take a starting spot.

Spurs are high up on the list and they're a rather average team once you remove Kane and Son. Sustainable my ass they are.

Stats are nice, but you can use it to interpret anything you want.

 

[tomaldinho1]

How long until we see SSM used in an argument. What a crock of shite.

 

[OleBoiii]

If age plays a significant part in the calculation then I'm not surprised. Our squad is really young. There's not a single player in our best starting XI older than 28(apart from DDG maybe). More than half our starting XI is 25 years old or younger(most of them younger).

 

[P-Nut]

Good to see us at the top of something, but it doesn't make much sense to me.

Say you buy Sancho tomorrow, he would get you zero points I believe as he hasn't been at the club before so would be multiplying his age by 0 meaning he adds no sustainability to your squad however wrong that is. In fact it would add more sustainabity to your squad in 5 years when he's got less time left with you

 

[Roboc7]

Murtough previous job was related to our academy and the woman teams so technically this was bit of part of his work but the most influence one obviously Ole and his coaching staffs.

We spent the money on good age players like Bruno, Maguire, Bissaka, James, VDB, Diallo and etc. And also how him and his coaching staffs improve and develop our players like McTominay, Shaw Rashford and etc. This is something what people (who don’t appreciate the progress we made under Ole) couldn’t see. The re-structure and rebuild of the squad, progress is not just about points but also the squad and we have better squad now for long term than when we were under Jose. @SAFMUTD

A younger squad isn’t a better squad and it’s not necessarily putting us into a better long term position, it might do it might not.

I don’t see point in patting everyone on the back because the team is younger, at some point you have to stop talking about the future and potential and deliver in the present, that time will be soon for Ole and others.

 

[harms]

You look at our top 4 competitors. City, Leicester, Pool and Spurs have ageing squads, with average ages of 26.1, 26.4, 26.8 and 27 respectively. Older than ours anyway. We have the 3rd youngest squad in the league at 25.6.

What’s the watershed between one of the youngest and an ageing squad? 26, I presume? I mean, the difference between us and Pool is quite drastic, but there is that much between us and City to get all high and mighty about it.

 

[UNITED ACADEMY]

A younger squad isn’t a better squad and it’s not necessarily putting us into a better long term position, it might do it might not.

I don’t see point in patting everyone on the back because the team is younger, at some point you have to stop talking about the future and potential and deliver in the present, that time will be soon for Ole and others.

A younger squad that is well developed is necessarily putting us into a better long term position. That's the point of progress in achieving the project, you want to rebuild/restructure the team because that is the most important initial step so you can have a proper team to win the league or even UCL and it will take time and sacrifices. Those times are used to develop the young players and improve others as well as inject leadership into the team year by year. Not an instant one that end up unsuccessful but still cost huge amount of money and result in a restart of the rebuilding job which cost even more money & time.

 

[Roboc7]

A younger squad that is well developed is necessarily putting us into a better long term position. That's the point of progress in achieving the project, you want to rebuild/restructure the team because that is the most important initial step so you can have a proper team to win the league or UCL and it will take time and sacrifices. Those times are used to develop the young players and improve others as well as inject leadership into the team year by year. Not an instant one that end up unsuccessful but still cost huge amount of money and result in a restart of the rebuilding job which cost even more money & time.

In theory yes, in reality that’s the hard part. Buying players with potential, buying time by talking about a cultural reset and a rebuild are all easy but they guarantee absolutely nothing. Delivering on what your promising isn’t easy but at some point you have to (especially when virtually no one in coaching/management/recruitment position has actually done it before).

Amad might be a great player in 3 years, he might be out on loan sat on the bench somewhere, buying unfulfilled potential isn’t difficult.

 

[Lappen]

a lott of negativity around this.

I think its just indicates that someone in the club have plans for the future, good ore bad. I would have liked to see the differences now and for lets say three years ago. Didn't we have the youngest starting lineup in the prem than? The numbers could actually be worse today.
It does not say we will win anything, and we all know every team buy and sell players. But I guess this could be an indicator that we have the foundation of a team in place to support the stars we buy, or the other way around, in the next years as well.

Is it not nice to see that we do think in long terms, and not the short term focus that I did have a feeling was the thing under Morinho (even if the numbers could have looked better then). We buy young promising players and fill out the group with older experience ones like Mata, Cavani and probably a couple others. I like that plan, I am not shore it will be successful, but I don´t think we ever will use the same amount of money like City, Chelsea or PSG on new players. If we want to compete, lets do it the United way with the young ones.

 

[RashyForPM]

What’s the watershed between one of the youngest and an ageing squad? 26, I presume? I mean, the difference between us and Pool is quite drastic, but there is that much between us and City to get all high and mighty about it.

No one’s getting high and mighty about it, I simply said that we have the youngest squad out of all the top teams in the league, thus our future looks bright when you also take into account the quality of those players. That’s it.

 

[Lentwood]

People dismiss this kind of thing but it’s actually incredibly important, especially in the modern game whereby big transfers are becoming increasingly difficult to pull off.

I’d argue that if you want evidence of just how important this is, take a look at the Man Utd and AC Milan teams that played out the 3-2 at OT in 2010 and then consider that these two teams take each other on in the Europa League tonight. Both clubs suffered a big fall from grace due to inadequate succession planning and failing to replace big players at the right time

 

[red_de_pologne]

that is considering our rivals don't buy any players.. which they will

 

[Schmeichel's Cartwheel]

PR team on point as always

 

[Bobcat]

PR team on point as always

How miserable are you really?

We do have a young squad with quite a bit of potential. And this is from an external source so its not like its some PR stunt from the club. Unless of course you think @sglowrider is a shill

 

[roonster09]

PR team on point as always

fecking hell, it's an independent site who does lot of these weird studies.

 

[Mickeza]

Not having it. We’re absolutely shite and no top player would ever join us.

 

[Old Ma Crow]

Thought this would be about the carbon footprint of the squad.

 

[Rightnr]

These stats are well and good BUT football is such a fluid sport.

Things change season-to-season (look at the scousers), so doing such a point-in-time analysis without taking into account our greedy owners' lack of ambition and willingness to invest smart and big is enough to make the whole argument pretty academic.

Nice PR for Glazerchester United though.

 

[roonster09]

End of the day, these stats doesn't matter. These stats are also skewed by few old players who don't play much. Also football clubs don't stand still, they refresh their squads if they have money and good clubs do it very quickly.

We need first team at their peak and young players who push them for the position.

 

[harms]

No one’s getting high and mighty about it, I simply said that we have the youngest squad out of all the top teams in the league, thus our future looks bright when you also take into account the quality of those players. That’s it.

But what’s an ageing squad and what was a point of using it? I mean, every squad is an ageing squad unless a half of it is filled with Benjamins Buttons.

 

[Ajr]

Sustainability is important, if we don't properly conserve our players how are we going to fight this climate emergency?

 

[MU655]

Others teams will sign players, though, so this doesn't really mean much.

City only at 26.1, so they have a good two seasons to sign players before the average will be getting too high. Plenty of time for them to bring the average down.

The same can be said for Leicester etc. who will probably lose one or two players in that time and will replace with younger ones.

Also, it assumes our players will want to stay. It doesn't really mean much.

 

[SuperiorXI]

We're back!

 

[Lewnited]

Huh, what is the correlation between having a high sustainability rating and being likely to win a league title?

 

[UNITED ACADEMY]

In theory yes, in reality that’s the hard part. Buying players with potential, buying time by talking about a cultural reset and a rebuild are all easy but they guarantee absolutely nothing. Delivering on what your promising isn’t easy but at some point you have to (especially when virtually no one in coaching/management/recruitment position has actually done it before).

Amad might be a great player in 3 years, he might be out on loan sat on the bench somewhere, buying unfulfilled potential isn’t difficult.

Even if we have Pep Guardiola or getting back Sir Alex Ferguson to the managerial job is also guarantee absolutely nothing. So even if you want to put input on it or other alternative to tell people in here another best way that United should do from now is also guarantee absolutely nothing.

End of the day, Nothing is guaranteed mate. But what we absolutely know is in order to win major trophies like PL or CL, we need to have a good proper squad to win it. In order word, you want to rebuild the squad first because that is the most important initial step and rebuilding job doesn't take an instant process. Players are currently being well developed and show improvement and we injected leaders in the squad, that's also part of the progress.

 

[RUCK4444]

Huh, what is the correlation between having a high sustainability rating and being likely to win a league title?

Well it means we have a squad that is young and talented and therefore we can pinpoint the areas of weakness and have a very competitive team, without having to have a total rebuild anytime soon (unlike other sides.)

It doesn’t mean we are better or worse than any other team, all it means is we’ve improved our recruitment (thanks Ole! Even though others don’t give him any credit for it.)

It effectively means we have an excellent base to build on. Again, thanks Ole.

 

[Lassitude42]

And I'd recycle many of them

 

[Abraxas]

I think the problem with this particular stat is that length of time at the club and contract duration are not necessarily indicators of anything on the footballing side except propensity to retain players.

Average age is already a more interesting stat for the purposes of analysing potential football related improvement. Adding additional complexity might be useful from a strategic/commercial point of view because it speaks to how we protect assets but it's not particularly useful in gathering sporting insight as far as I can see.

 

[ivaldo]

You don't need this type of analysis to come to that conclusion. The age of our squad along with the quality we have in the youth set up shows we've got a bright future. Am I right in saying we had the youth squad of any team in the PL last year? The transformation we've seen over the last two years has been fantastic. So many of our players haven't yet reached their peak. A few more smart acquisitions and we'll be there or there abouts.

 

[Gentleman Jim]

Speaking purely from a City POV the difference of a few months between our squad and United's doesn't bother me much.
Things that are not taken into account are playing style, squad rotation and imminent squad revamps (in our case the likely departure of Aguero and Fernandinho in the next 0/1 seasons) will reduce the squad age.
United and City do both seem to have plenty of promising players in the youth setup who may advance to the senior squad in time.

 

[Rightnr]

You don't need this type of analysis to come to that conclusion. The age of our squad along with the quality we have in the youth set up shows we've got a bright future. Am I right in saying we had the youth squad of any team in the PL last year? The transformation we've seen over the last two years has been fantastic. So many of our players haven't yet reached their peak. A few more smart acquisitions and we'll be there or there abouts.

I don't class losing semi finals and finishing second as a bright future. Maybe these guys need to recalibrate.

 

[LoneStar]

I think the point is that we have a good group of young players to build a base around to win things. Obviously this will only work provided we keep the best players we have and add top quality players (and great coaching) on top.

 

[ivaldo]

I don't class losing semi finals and finishing second as a bright future. Maybe these guys need to recalibrate.

So the only way a team can have a bright future is by already being successful? Sure.