Rangers have the oldest team in Scottish football, according to data from the CIES Football Observatory. Since the start of the season, the average age of players in Giovanni van Bronckhorst's team was 28.42, the highest figure out of any 12 Premiership sides.
At the other end of the scale, Aberdeen are the youngest at 25.67, followed by Celtic (26.07) and Hibs (26.31). When broken down to percentage of minutes played by age category, Aberdeen had the highest of under 21s at 23%.
For 22-25s Hibs came out on top at 53.5%, 26-29s was Livingston at 56.85 and for over 30s it was St Johnstone 39.1%. Celtic had the lowest percentage of minutes played by over 30s at 11.8 per cent, while Livingston came in bottom for playing under 21s at 1.5%, followed by Hearts 4.8%. CIES pulled together data from 60 leagues worldwide (not including B-teams) to gather their figures.
They discovered that Danish side FC Nordsjaelland had the lowest average age at 22.31 - 73.7% of minutes played by under-21s. At the other end of the scale, Thai club Nongbua Pitchaya had the oldest team at 31.99.
When only taking into account the average age of clubs in Europe’s big five leagues (England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France), Spanish side Valencia (23.99) were the youngest, with Bochum of Germany the oldest (29.85)
Scotland
Average age on the pitch since the start of the season:
Age Club
25.67 Aberdeen
26.07 Celtic
26.3.1 Hibs
26.64 Ross County
26.69 Kilmarnock
27.27 Dundee United
27.28 Motherwell
27.8 Hearts
27.97 St Mirren
28.05 Livingston
28.26 St Johnstone
28.42 Rangers
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