Youth attributes

I'm sort of switching jobs and stuff so haven't been too active on the blog lately. Michael over in Miller wanted some details about youth attributes, so I did some analysis and thought I'd write up my findings on how kids' attributes compare to grown ups'.

What I did was to filter all 15-17 yos in Voller and compare them to 28-29 yos.

Now, I've just thrown all positions (minus GKs) under the same bus here, but hopefully the data sets are comparable with each other. The reason for this is that I needed a minimum sample of 1000 players, and couldn't get that without either increasing the age range or including all positions. The three individual regression results are using Average Rating, Team Goals Scored and Team Goals Conceded.

Key findings:
Work Rate stands out as the most influental attribute for youth. The higher the work rate, the higher the chances of getting improved match ratings and scoring more team goals. The reason behind this is not up to me to answer, but perhaps there is a stronger correlation between high teamwork and CA?
For the grown ups, Work Rate is not that important, although it is still scores as a top 5 attribute for impacting Average Rating.

Flair, as we already know is important for increasing Average Rating for both kids and grown ups.

Some other points to note is that Acceleration and Pace are less important for youth, and that Heading is more important. From previous research, this could indicate that the youth data set might have included a higher number of midfielders, but since I never displayed playing position when mining the data, that is anyone's guess! :)

Anticipation, Creativity, Concentration and Off The Ball also look to be less important for youth in terms of Average Rating, whilst Balance and Passing is more important for the youth players compared to the 28/29 yos.

Overall, the mean Average Rating for the senior data sample was 6.87, the mean Average Rating for the youth data sample was 6.79, so it shows that age is still golden, if only by a small amount! :)

Again, I wouldn't read too much into this data. It all gets a bit fuzzy when all playing positions are merged together in one big group.

Here are the means for grown ups and youth respectively.