Fact-Check: How old are the Under-23s?

I guess they might come back alleging that this year is different as indicated by a much less successful season. I wonder if the average age last year was significantly higher when we won trophies?

I was pondering that question, Dave: I think you're right. I'll have to go back and do it for the previous three seasons too!

Oh, and what effect, if any, has a steady stream of different managers had on this age level?

It can't all just be, "Everton are shitty at producing..."

Tommy (#6); and what further chances has Dowell been given with us? I'm not entirely a believer that, if they don't make it on loan they wouldn't have made it with us, but I would like to see us take a chance at some time.

Alan (4) In response to your last question, I think the rapid turnover has had a significant effect along with the plethora of new players flooding into the club every summer. Struggling managers have wrestled with how best to use the expensive imports. Expecting them also to familiarise themselves with the Under 23s and work out how any of them might fit into the first team set-up was almost a non-starter.

The players who have stepped up, principally Davies, Holgate and Calvert-Lewin, have done so because there were gaps which could not be filled by any other means. Hence the likes of Kieran Dowell who has had two league cup appearances in the last three seasons have had little or no opportunity to progress. In front of him in August 2017 were Rooney, Sigurdsson and Klaassen. Koeman, Unsworth and Allardyce never did work out how to use those three. In the meantime, Dowell was farmed out to an average Nottm Forest team for whom he started well but fell away after a change of manager.

For those not aware, Michael lives in the Seattle area, which has been Ground Zero for the virus in the US. New York City may be getting all the headlines now, but Seattle has been under the cosh since late January, a week after Wuhan blew up.

Back on the football, I'd love us to really focus on local youth. The quality is there I am convinced (and just as convinced of the abject shitness of foreign / has been players we spend a fortune on). Football is about identity and purpose and we need to regain ours – with the academy as the best place to start.

As for me in Oregon, I'm in an area not yet touched by the virus -- the nearest confirmed case is 100 miles away. Hope you and yours are keeping safe as well.

Thanks Michael, I didn't know where you lived and how bad your city has been affected, but ToffeeWeb has been a godsend at times mate — so thank you very much, to both yourself and LL!

Why?? Couldn't it happen again??? Them days, you had time to cultivate players and mould them. Now, everyone wants instant success. We were once called the Millionaires Club. But even then, we could only afford one star a season, be it, West, Kendall or a Ball.

Mate, have you found the washing machine yet? 😂

One I like (I'll get back to the topic in a second. We are not in a rush to do something are we?) is comparing results this season to last. Consistently, season after season between 45-55% of results are exactly the same. So whilst it is often decried as rubbish, it has some sense of predictability.

But back to the topic, I have a spreadsheet of players minutes on the pitch going back to the 1984-85 season (how sad is that? Very!! I hear you cry). Now it was in the day of 1 sub, not the any 3 from 7 and maybe not a squad game like today, but the first choice team started 92% of the games. But the average age of the team running out was 24 years 4 months. And they aged 9 months over the season! That means 24y at the start of the season and 24y9m at the end gives an average of 24y4m.

Compare that against the current squad. The last 38 game is a team with an average age of almost 26y4m. 2 years older on average than the team that walked away with the League Championship.

Perhaps that makes 29th May 1985 even more of tragedy for our club. It was a very young side. Even Andy Gray was 29 and Peter Reid 28 when we collected the trophy.

And the oldest - during 2011, the average age was 30 years 8 months. Howard, Hibbert, Distin, Neville, Osman, Saha, Cahill all over 30 and Jagielka 29.

We are currently renting a place just outside Tiverton in Devon, and what a lovely part of the British countryside this is!

The huge irony is that I had to persuade my US firm that I could be just as effective working remotely (this was a month or two before Covod-19 hit)... and now the whole company is doing it!

But yea, we were actually living in downtown Kirkland, which is at the heart of the King County epicentre. I guess you could say we did a runner.

Forgive me if we've discussed this before, we did have a Comparisions thing going a few years back, doing what you described. I'd modelled it on something from the matchday programme that gave this information.

It's been a few years and I found updating it from one season to the next especially taxing of my limited spreadsheet skills... But my desire was to include it on the site.

Here's a link to the last one: 2006-07 Comparisons.

If you have something that fits the bill and would be okay having us publish it... just saying!!!

Brian #14, yes I have, and she is quite noisy. I'd tell you her name but I'm afraid it would get back to my wife. (Kidding! Kidding!)

I like to maintain a spreadsheet of all the players I would like Everton to buy. This has become immensely detailed over the years (been doing it since I was about 13). I use it to 'scout' players from across the globe and to spend (in my own warped version of reality) Moshiri's money wisely.

Obviously it is a complete waste of my time. It is interesting to no-one but me. But I am glad I have a kindred spirit with his own utterly pointless spreadsheet that (and I'm biased) sounds even less interesting to the average fan than my own. Thank god for ToffeeWeb.

Thankfully, Mike, I know that the good guys like you and Jamie and many, many others are keeping watch. Who will vote for him in November?

I fear the virus in US will peak around then and we will have an unelected Trump with special powers. I prefer Putin, mainly because he humiliated Trump and exposed him as a coward.

Sorry about the rant. Love USA, hate Trump and the cowards who stand behind him.

With the likes of this pandemic, climate change and leaders like Putin and Trump being popular despite their flaws being well known, things have a very End of Days feel at the moment!

But you'd better backpedal on that Putin comment, dude. Trump is a megalomaniac clown, but he's not assassinating opponents, invading other countries and sabotaging democracies.

Who has Unsworth actually developed, only Tom Davis has broken through and he's been with the first team for years... Everybody in football laughs at Everton's U23s because they put results before development. They won things in the past with Oumar Niasse playing centre-forward, fact. Hilarious.

U23s have not won anything this year, they have also not won many games, so you need to research the years that they did win, and I am sure they played with prominently older players than the opposition, Omar Niasse, Jose Baxter, Brendon Galloway, Tyas Browning, Harry Charsley etc etc

This year they haven't been much good at all, why? Because the team is slightly younger than previous seasons, but still players are over 20...

Player's over the age of 20 should be moved up to the first team or sold or released, not playing in a what's described as a Mickey Mouse league!!!

After all, clubs do name squads of 25 players of which no more than 14 of the 18 named are going to run on in any given week.