Imps just keep getting younger, but by how much?

Lincoln City are currently boasting a very young side indeed and with more youngsters coming through nearly every week, we invested the average age of the current side. There is both a surprise and a lack of surprise when comparing the ages of the team at the beginning of the season to the season now, but what are those surprises?

When the Imps kicked off against Shrewsbury Town at the beginning of the season, City fans had heavily criticised the management for having an old squad. Jamie Forrester, Mark Stallard, Steve Torpey, Adie Moses and Gary Croft were all over 30, Marriott was also rapidly approaching that age. But what do you think the average age of that squad was?

Take into account though that a lot of players hadn't had a birthday at the time. For example, Alan Marriott has had a birthday since that game at Shrewsbury, turning him from 28 to 29.

There were also quite a lot of younger players around in the team as well. City still had two teenagers in Watt and Warlow (both 19). Green, Dodds and Dany were 20 years old, infact, it was Dany's 20th birthday on the day of the Shrewsbury game. Oliver Ryan and Lee Frecklington were both 22 and Ryan Amoo was just 23.

So taking all that into account, it's not too surprising to hear that the average age of the first team was just over 25 years and 6 months. Comined they were 409 years old. Not as old as most of you would have expected.

So, moving onto that recent game against Hereford and although you've now got 3 teenagers in the 16, five of the other 13 have had a birthday since that Shrewsbury game. There were also seven players who didn't feature in the 16 against Shrewsbury that were in the 16 on Monday.

So, the 3 teenagers (Hone, LJL and Pembleton) were obviously bringing the average age down, but now the majority of the 16 were over 25. Infact, a grand total of 9 of the 16 were over 25. There were also three over 30s in the squad (Forrester, Stallard and Moses).

Well I can tell you that as a collective the Imps were younger by 22 years. Spread over the 16 players it makes an average of 24 years, 2 months and 2 weeks.

So, the difference in average was little over a year. Surprised? I certainly was