Max Dowman, 15, and Rio Ngumoha, 16, could share a pitch in the Premier League this weekend. Ahead of Liverpool vs Arsenal, we analyse whether the league is getting younger.
It was in January 2017 when Pep Guardiola – then just a few months into his Manchester City tenure – questioned youth development at Premier League clubs. The existing system, comprising of a separate pyramid for ‘reserve’ or age-group sides, didn’t provide intense enough atmospheres or competition to prepare players for top-flight football, he felt.
Guardiola insisted the “future of English football” would follow the Spanish example by allowing ‘B’ teams to compete in the Football League.
Even then, this was an initiative that had long since been debated and ruled out. But regardless of whether Guardiola’s opinion was right or not, his comments came at a time when youth development was a hot topic in England.
After all, England had recently been embarrassingly dumped out of the European Championship by Iceland in 2016, in what was seen as one of the national team’s lowest ever moments. Looking to the future and trying to see the promise of success on an international level was arguably more difficult than ever at that point, and there was a school of thought that the Premier League might even be a hindrance.
As England’s top flight grew in popularity and wealth, there was a perception it was becoming harder for young players to make the step up.
In fact, during the 2016-17 season – which directly followed Euro 2016 – teenagers in the Premier League cumulatively played just 6,580 minutes; that’s the fewest for a single top-flight campaign since at least 1992-93.
That total was contributed to by just 33 players. That then fell to 28 teenagers in 2017-18, which is the second fewest to feature in a single season in the Premier League era (25 – 2001-02).
While the impact of Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) on the sales of academy graduates remains a major discussion point, today’s Premier League does seem younger, and more teams appear to be targeting young players in the transfer market to a greater degree.
On top of that, there’s trust and faith in these players to make a difference. Just ask Rio Ngumoha and Max Dowman.
While perhaps not the dominant narrative ahead of Sunday’s blockbuster Premier League duel between Arsenal and Liverpool, the two teenagers will certainly be among the talking points.
There were significant signs in pre-season that 2025-26 was going to be big for the two young English talents. Each played a major role in their respective team’s friendlies, catching the eye to an extent that it seemed unthinkable their Premier League debuts wouldn’t come in the opening weeks of the campaign.
Matchday 2 brought just that. Dowman was introduced from the bench just past the hour against Leeds, becoming the second-youngest player in Premier League history aged 15 years and 235 days – only Gunners teammate Ethan Nwaneri (15y, 181d) has featured in the competition at a younger age.
Then, two days later, Ngumoha – who first played for Liverpool’s senior side in a January FA Cup game – was substituted on against Newcastle and scored the dramatic winner in a 3-2 victory. Aged 16 years, 361 days old, he was the competition’s fourth-youngest goalscorer ever, and Liverpool’s youngest of all time.
Rio Ngumoha Goal vs Newcastle
But are assumptions about the league’s age profile accurate? Is the Premier League really getting younger? Well, there are a few different ways of looking at this.
Firstly, it makes sense to look specifically at 2025-26. Although we are obviously only two matchdays into the campaign and therefore have a limited amount of data to work with, we can compare what we have this term to the same timeframes in other seasons.
Doing that reveals the average starting XI age of Premier League teams in 2025-26 has been younger than across the opening two matchdays of any other season in the competition’s history.
Premier League starting XIs - First two MDs
While the viz above shows a fairly significant drop from last season to this, there has generally been a trend of starting XIs getting younger across the first two matchdays since 2010-11.
But what makes this data look even more stark for 2025-26 is the fact we’re only analysing starting XIs here; Dowman and Ngumoha, the two youngest players to feature in the Premier League this term, don’t influence the numbers as neither has started a game.
We are limited, however, in the other areas we can analyse 2025-26 specifically, simply because so few games have been played. But given how early into the campaign we are, 2024-25 arguably still carries some relevance.
Teenagers cumulatively managed 430 Premier League appearances last term. It’s worth saying straight away that four 38-game seasons have actually had more, so that didn’t break any records.
Nevertheless, 430 was the most cumulative Premier League appearances by teenagers in 19 years. The last season to have more was 2005-06, with 468.
Premier League matches played by teenagers
It’s a similar story with respect to minutes given to teenagers in the Premier League. In 2024-25, that figure was 18,988, a slight increase on the season before (18,842) and the second highest (after 2013-14, 19,813 mins) it’s been since players under the age of 20 were given 23,658 minutes on the pitch in the top flight way back in 2006-07.
Of course, both cumulative appearances and minutes by teenagers in a season can be skewed by a handful of individuals playing a lot of football. One way around that would be to look at the number of different teenagers given an appearance each season.
Figures in recent years are very positive. The 2023-24 season saw 64 different teenagers make an appearance – that’s a Premier League record, one more than in 1998-99. Last term then decreased slightly to 59, though that’s still enough to rank third over the league’s entire history (including the first two seasons, which were 42-game campaigns).
Premier League teenagers given match time
Some of these outputs will be influenced by players being young enough to be a teenager in multiple seasons, and it only takes a few of them to make a notable difference to the numbers.
One way around that, then, is to only count teenage debutants – meaning it’s just their first appearance that is considered in the data. While putting equal value on one teenager who plays 3,000 minutes and one who plays for a single minute might not be that instructive in some respects, it can potentially quantify the trust managers have in giving youngsters their first opportunity.
The 2024-25 season also comes out well in this respect.
In total, 46 teenagers made their Premier League debuts last term, which accounted for 8.2% of all players in the league. The only season in which the proportion has been higher was the very first (9.7% – 1992-93) and that’ll have been because every teenager who featured couldn’t have possibly played in the competition beforehand.
Premier League teenage debutants as a proportion of total players
Fifty-three teenagers made their Premier League debut in 1992-93, but further highlighting how much of a special case that season was is the fact that figure didn’t go above 38 again until 2023-24 (42).
It might also be prudent to look more specifically at the very youngest players to feature in the Premier League, so the 15- and 16-year-olds. For instance, 16-year-olds playing in the Premier League isn’t exactly a new phenomenon; the first was Mark Platts of Sheffield Wednesday in 1995-96, while the likes of Francis Jeffers, Gary McSheffrey, James Milner, Wayne Rooney and Aaron Lennon all made their top-flight bows before turning 17.
But 15-year-olds getting minutes in the competition is a more recent curiosity. First came Nwaneri in September 2022, followed by Jeremy Monga in April 2025, and most recently Dowman last weekend.
Already, 2025-26 is the fourth successive season in which two players aged 16 or younger have featured in the Premier League. While none appeared in 2021-22, there were also another two in 2020-21.
Before this recent run, there had never been back-to-back Premier League seasons that featured multiple players aged 16 or younger. If one more 15- or 16-year-old gets minutes this term, 2025-26 will be the first to have more than two make an appearance.
It goes without saying that the change to allow more substitutes has likely had a role in all of this. The Premier League first temporarily increased the number of permitted subs per game to five for each team during the coronavirus pandemic, then reducing them back to three for 2020-21.
But five permitted substitutions became a permanent rule ahead of the 2022-23 campaign, and it’s easy to see why that might have been influential.
Similarly, some might go as far as suggesting the 2024-25 numbers could have been skewed somewhat by a significant number of Premier League teams having little to play for across the final weeks of the season, as the title race and relegation battle were decided very early.
Perhaps there are hints of truth in those caveats. Nevertheless, the data certainly suggests the Premier League is getting younger – just maybe not quite the youngest it’s ever been.
Premier League Stats Opta
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