Manchester United named the second-youngest team across Europe's top five leagues this weekend on Monday night to back up manager Louis van Gaal's claims that he gives young players a chance.
The former Premier League champions picked a starting XI for the 2-2 draw at West Bromwich Albion with an average age of 24.6 years, putting them older only than Valencia's lineup (24.4), according to research by the CIES Football Observatory.
Van Gaal's starting XI included teenagers Luke Shaw and Adnan Januzaj, both 19, plus 22-year-old defender Phil Jones and 23-year-old goalkeeper David de Gea, while Robin van Persie was the only player over 26 in the team.
The 63-year-old Dutchman has also given Premier League starts to defenders Tyler Blackett, 20, and Paddy McNair, 19, this season while 18-year-old James Wilson has featured as a substitute.
United's average age at the Hawthorns was reduced because captain Wayne Rooney -- who turns 29 on Friday -- was suspended and several other experienced players, including Michael Carrick, Darren Fletcher, Ashley Young, Antonio Valencia and Radamel Falcao, did not start.
Manager Van Gaal has argued that he has shown a commitment to promoting emerging players throughout his career.
"I'm not a coach who thinks short term; I am a coach who thinks always in the long term," Van Gaal said in July. "When you see Ajax, I had the youngest team to win the Champions League [in 1995] with 17, 18, 19-year-old players. And the way you see Barcelona still playing with six players from my time is because I gave a lot of chances to the youth players.
"The structure and the culture of the club is Xavi, [Andrés] Iniesta, [Carles] Puyol, [Victor] Valdes.
"At Bayern Munich it was the same. You can see that in [Thomas] Muller, [David] Alaba, [Toni] Kroos, that kind of player, so I am always for the long term not the short term."
However, United's local rivals Manchester City fielded the third oldest team in Europe against Tottenham this weekend and the oldest in England with an average age of 29.3 years.
Manager Manuel Pellegrini chose 36-year-old Frank Lampard, 33-year-old Martin Demichelis and 31-year-old Bacary Sagna in a side where four-goal Sergio Aguero, 26, was the youngest man to start in the 4-1 win.
Sir Alex Ferguson, meanwhile, has hit back at criticisms that he left an ageing United team behind when he retired and insists there was nothing wrong with his legacy to his successor David Moyes.
The former manager, who left his post in 2013 after winning 13 league titles and two Champions Leagues, was condemned when United only finished seventh in the first season after his departure and Moyes was sacked after struggling with Ferguson's squad.
While Ferguson defended the choice of his fellow Scot as United boss, he insists the squad Moyes inherited is no older than the current group which has helped Chelsea top the Premier League this season.
Ferguson, who felt he also bought and developed young players, wrote in a new chapter of his 2013 book My Autobiography, which is quoted in the Guardian: "Chelsea started the current season as favourites for the title, with a squad that also had six players in their 30s. I don't hear any grumbles about the age of their group."
Ferguson felt that one of the reasons Moyes struggled was because he slowed the tempo of United's game down, arguing his own methods always involved playing at pace.
"The reason for playing at speed was that United players had been accustomed to operating that way," he wrote. "If the tempo slowed for any reason, I would be into them at half-time. 'This is not us,' I would say. Playing with speed never hindered our results. It was our way: energy and determination in the last third of the pitch."