Liverpool must not panic despite setting scary Premier League high at the weekend – RTK View

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The Liverpool team that started against Fulham this weekend was the oldest in the Premier League. The Reds must not panic, though.

The Athletic pointed out an interesting statistic this week. Liverpool, it seems, started with the oldest team in the Premier League at the weekend. 28.7 was the average age of that starting XI – exactly the same as Chelsea’s.

And that can easily start the warning sirens. After all, it suggests a team that’s moving past it’s peak, that lacks players in their prime and one that could run into problems very soon.

The wrong signings – or lack of any – would see the problem spiral out of control. The players won’t be any younger in a year’s time.

This also comes on the back of Liverpool’s oldest starting XI for 59 years. Their Community Shield XI was even older, with an average age of over 30. Again, it doesn’t make for good reading.

But despite that, we don’t think Liverpool need to worry. It’s a problem they’ve already fixed.

Liverpool use oldest team

This will happen when you’re as picky with your transfers as Liverpool are. They have a strong desire for consistency, rather than a mass turnover of players.

But no one should look at Saturday’s starting XI in isolation. For one, Ibrahima Konaté was almost certainly supposed to start that game over Joel Matip. The former is 23, the latter 31 (though, he was 30 against Fulham). That one switch pushed the average age up.

And Liverpool quite clearly plan to move to a younger team soon. Darwin Nunez is another who is still only 23 and replacing the 30-year-old Roberto Firmino again moves the average age down.

Honestly, Liverpool’s biggest concern shouldn’t be that their average age is high. The real problem is a lack of players in their prime years – which we’d say are between 25 and 28.

The Reds’ stars are typically now 30 or over – Matip, Virgil van Dijk, Jordan Henderson, Thiago, Mohamed Salah and Firmino all tick that box. There is then a very young generation of players with Konaté, Nunez, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Harvey Elliott, Curtis Jones and Fabio Carvalho.

It means their ‘prime’ players are Alisson Becker, Joe Gomez, Andy Robertson, Fabinho, Diogo Jota and Luis Diaz. Now, Gomez doesn’t start regularly, while Jota and Diaz aren’t still quite at their absolute peak. The other three certainly are – but that’s not very many players. You can actually say that Liverpool have only three players at the definite peak of their powers.

Three years ago, it was most of the team. The group now over 30 – and Sadio Mané – were all in their prime years. Alisson, Robertson and Fabinho were just starting theirs, too.

That’s a big difference but Liverpool needn’t panic. It’ll just take patience as in two years’ time, they’ll be at that point again.