Matthew Sadler's debut as Birmingham's youngest Premiership player spotlighted the contrast with Bolton's aging team. Five of their six most commonly-used starters are over thirty and in the 37-year-old Bergsson, they have the league's oldest outfield player to start a game this year, barring Nigel Winterburn

The average age of the team they have put out this season is 29 years 10 months, more than a year and a half greater than the next oldest, Tottenham Hotspur. The Bradford teams of their two-year sojurn in the top flight are the only ones to have a starting line-up that averaged more than 30 years

The oldest teams tend to be those who have relied on the more experienced Premiership player to help get promotion or assist them in staying up. Often these tend to be men who are on the downside of their career and surplus to requirements at the bigger clubs. Of the oldest twelve teams in Premiership history, five have finished seventeenth or lower, but the couple that just avoided relegation, Bradford, in 1999/00, and Bolton, last year, may have gone down if they had blooded younger players

The oldest team to win the Premiership has been the 1997/8 Arsenal team, ranking nineteenth in age overall but the most senior team that season. Some of the youngest teams have proved quite succesful, particularly the O'Leary's Leeds sides which account for three of the four youngest squads. At an average of just 24 years and 162 days for the starters, the youngest ever team of 1999/00 managed to finish third. Manchester United's 1995/6 squad were the youngest champions (25/336) just edging out Blackburn's team of the year before (25/343)

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