These graphics are intended to give a quick visual overview of the age of players that each club has fielded in league matches using a technique very similar to “population pyramid” graphs, although I’ll freely admit that they’ve come out with shades of the Rorschach test (or as someone observed on Twitter, the Habitat lighting range).

Explanation

Hopefully they’re fairly self-explanatory, but here’s a quick summary anyway:

For each club I’ve added up all the league minutes played by every player this season and calculated the percentage accumulated by players of every age, rolling up “18 and under” and “35 and over” for neatness’ sake.

Each vertical “step” on a club’s chart is a year, with the major age milestones denoted by slightly thicker lines (as per the labels on the left). The width of the coloured graph at each step corresponds to the percentage of minutes accounted for by players of that age.

I haven’t labelled the percentage values as the graphs were already getting pretty busy and I figured that the general shape and proportions were sufficient to compare teams against each other.

I’ve also calculated the average age of each club’s starting line-ups this season and used this to sort all the clubs in a division from oldest to youngest.

Hopefully that’s enough to give you the idea, so let’s dive in.

Tranmere have named the EFL’s oldest line-ups this season, as the only clubs whose average starting XI clocks in at over 29 years of age. Rovers have also given the EFL’s highest share of minutes to 30-somethings with 42.1%.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Forest Green‘s starting line-up has typically been just 25 years old and they’re the only club in the division not to have fielded a player aged over 31 this season.

Exeter deserve a mention for their faith in youth: no side in the top four divisions has given a higher share of minutes to players aged 21 or under (37.8%).