Behind The Numbers: The youngest Gunners

This week our statistician Josh James looks at Arsenal's all-time youngest players.

When he came off the bench on Wednesday evening, Serge Gnabry became the 40th player under the age of 18 to play for the Arsenal first team.

Aged 17 years and 74 days, the German forward is actually the 12th youngest player ever to represent the Club, and the 809th player overall to play for the Gunners.

Of the forty 16 and 17 year olds to be given a first-team debut, 21 (52.5 per cent) did so under Arsène Wenger.

The League Cup, especially recently, is the most popular time for young players to be blooded. Of the 21 players on the list to be give given their first-team bow by Wenger, all but three made their debut in the League Cup.

The exceptions were Theo Walcott and Jack Wilshere (both Premier League) and Aaron Ramsey, who is the only player on the entire list to make his debut in European football (Champions League).

Prior to Wenger's arrival only one 16/17 year-old (John Woodward) had their first taste of playing for Arsenal in the League Cup, the others all made their bow in league football.

Whereas the choice of competition for blooding youngsters may have changed over the years, it seems as though venue is unimportant when a manager decides to give a 16/17 year old his first run out. Twenty-five (62.5 per cent) of the players on the list made their debut in an away match, while the other 15 did so at home.

So how well do these wonderkids tend to do in their Arsenal careers after making an early start? A quick look at the names on the list should tell you that, generally, the answer is very well.

Among the players listed are the Club's top three all-time leading appearance makers (David O'Leary, Tony Adams and George Armstrong), the former club record scorer (Cliff Bastin) as well as two other members of the '100 Club' (John Radford and Reg Lewis).

Of the active players still on the list, Cesc Fabregas, Jack Wilshere, Theo Walcott and Aaron Ramsey in particular are players who look set to have long and successful careers ahead of them.

Not including Gnabry, the other 39 players who made debuts aged 16 or 17 have gone on to play an average of 143.2 first-team games for Arsenal (including those still at the Club).

This is nearly twice as many, on average, as in a 'typical' Arsenal career. Eight hundred and nine players have now represented the Club, each making an average 74.4 career appearances.

As far as goals are concerned, the 39 on the list scored an average of 24.4 each, which again compares very favourably with the all-time average. In fact it is more than twice the average for a typical Arsenal career – 10.7 goals.

Of all the 16/17 year-olds to make their debut, only Anthony Stokes did not go on to play any more games for Arsenal.

Then aged 17 and 92 days, the Irish forward played just two minutes at the end of a Carling Cup game against Sunderland in 2005. He later joined Sunderland (in 2007) and, now aged 24, he plays for Scottish champions Celtic. He remains the 13th youngest player to turn out for the Gunners.

Behind The Numbers

Behind The Numbers

When Tommy Meade played against Leicester Fosse in 1895, he became the first 17-year-old to represent the Club. A striker who scored seven goals from 14 appearances, he went on to sign for Tottenham Hotspur, and remained the Gunners' youngest player until Cliff Bastin played against Everton in Division One on October 5, 1929.

Nicknamed 'The Boy Bastin' he had scored 100 goals for Arsenal by the age of 23 and finished with 178 goals in all - a club record which stood for more than 50 years. He was the first player to win the league title, FA Cup and an England cap as a teenager.

In the 1950s Gerry Ward broke new ground when he became the first ever 16-year-old to represent Arsenal.

The winger played against Huddersfield at the beginning of the 1953/54 season, and made 84 appearances, scoring 10 goals, before National Service in the Army interrupted his career. He later played for Leyton Orient and Cambridge City before becoming a banker.

His record lasted the best part of half a century, before Jermaine Pennant - following his high-profile move from Notts County - usurped him in November 1999. The winger, aged 16 years and 319 days, came on during the Worthington Cup fourth-round defeat to Middlesbrough. It was a further three and a half years before he made his first Premier League start – marking the occasion with a hat-trick - against Southampton in 2003. He left for Birmingham City in 2005, and is now at Stoke.

The current holder of the youngest player record though, is Cesc Fabregas. Having joined the Arsenal academy in the summer of 2003, he didn't have long to wait for his debut. On October 28, 2003 he was named in the starting line-up for the Carling Cup third-round game at home to Rotherham United. Fabregas was taken off after 85 minutes as the Gunners eventually went through on penalties.

In the next round Fabregas scored against Wolves to become Arsenal's youngest ever goalscorer (aged 16 and 212 days). After playing more than 300 times for Gunners, scoring 57 goals, he left for boyhood club Barcelona in 2011 and has won the European Championship twice and the World Cup once.

Stats correct as at September 27, 2012.

Josh James also provides the stats for the Arsenal Analysis pages of the matchday programme.

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