[Premier League] Average Height Ranking — All 20 Clubs on Opening Weekend 2026-27

The 2026-27 Premier League season kicked off on 21 August 2026. For this piece we took the eleven players each club sent out for the opening round and worked out their average height. We deliberately left the substitutes out: the eleven names on the teamsheet at kick-off are the clearest statement a manager makes about the physical profile he wants to start a season with. The conditions are identical to our Eredivisie and J1 pieces.

The overall picture first. Across the 20 clubs and 219 starters whose height is on record, the Premier League average is 183.93cm. Leeds United lead on 186.45cm, Bournemouth are bottom on 181.27cm, a spread of 5.18cm. On the same round-one, starting-XI basis the Eredivisie averaged 181.96cm with a spread of 8.55cm, and J1 averaged 179.05cm with a spread of 6.00cm. The Premier League is not only the tallest of the three — it is also the most uniform. Every club is tall.

Leeds, Top of the Table — Five Starters in the 190s, and a Number Beyond the Eredivisie's Best

Leeds United lead the division on 186.45cm, having opened with a 1-0 win away at Nottingham Forest. James Trafford (198cm) kept goal behind a back three of Joe Rodon (193cm), Tarik Muharemovic (193cm) and Jaka Bijol (191cm), with the 193cm Anton Stach at the base of midfield. Their five starters at 190cm or above is the joint-most in the league alongside Liverpool — and 186.45cm is a bigger number than the 186.27cm that topped the entire Eredivisie table.

Second-placed Chelsea are built differently. Set aside the 198cm goalkeeper Robert Sánchez and nobody towers, but their shortest starter stands 178cm (Malo Gusto) — nobody in the low 170s at all. Only four clubs managed that floor: Chelsea, Everton, Arsenal and Tottenham. The highest floor anywhere in the Eredivisie was 175cm, so the Premier League's threshold sits three centimetres higher. Chelsea packed ten starters into the 180s and above and edged a five-goal thriller at Fulham, 3-2.

Even the bottom two are not small. 19th-placed Sunderland started eight players at 180cm or above; 20th-placed Bournemouth started six, and both fielded players in the 190s. Bournemouth's 181.27cm would beat Avispa Fukuoka's 180.91cm — the best starting XI in all of J1 — and would slot in around 11th in the Eredivisie, between AZ (181.64cm) and PEC Zwolle (181.09cm). There is, quite simply, no such thing as a short Premier League side.

Three Leagues Compared — The Gap Lives in Goal, Defence and Midfield, Not Up Front

The division's edge over the Eredivisie (+1.97cm) and J1 (+4.88cm) is not spread evenly across the pitch. Against J1 the biggest gap is in midfield at +6.50cm, with goalkeepers +4.45cm and defenders +4.78cm behind them. Forwards, by contrast, are only +1.94cm above J1 — and a mere +0.34cm above the Eredivisie. The Premier League's height is manufactured at the back and through the middle, not up front.

Look inside that midfield line and six starters stand in the 190s: Fulham's Sander Berge (196cm), Leeds' Anton Stach (193cm), Everton's Merlin Röhl (193cm), Liverpool's Ryan Gravenberch (191cm), Forest's Ibrahim Sangaré (191cm) and Hull's Matt Crooks (191cm). The Eredivisie had four such midfielders on opening weekend; J1 had none. The habit of putting height in the centre of the pitch scales almost perfectly with the level of the league.

The goalkeepers are more extreme still. The 20 of them average 192.30cm, thirteen stand 190cm or taller, and three measure exactly 198cm (Trafford at Leeds, Sánchez at Chelsea, Hornícek at Newcastle). The two shortest — Arsenal's David Raya at 183cm and Everton's Jordan Pickford at 185cm — both play for clubs near the top of this ranking, a reminder that distribution and reflexes can still outbid pure reach.

The Tallest Is 206cm Kjell Scherpen — and Only One Starter Stands Below 170cm

The tallest starter of the round was Ipswich Town's goalkeeper Kjell Scherpen at 206cm — the only player above two metres across all three leagues we have surveyed. In the same eleven stood three players at 173cm, including Daizen Maeda, giving Ipswich a 33cm gap between their tallest and shortest starter, the widest of the 20 clubs. Scherpen, incidentally, played in the Eredivisie for Excelsior last season: the height import route from the Netherlands runs straight into this table.

At the other end, exactly one starter stands below 170cm: Crystal Palace's right wing-back Daniel Muñoz at 165cm — 0.5% of the sample. On the same basis the Eredivisie had seven such starters (3.5%) and J1 had sixteen (7.3%); the Premier League is an order of magnitude removed. Eight more players measure exactly 170cm, and the make-up of those nine is telling: four are registered defenders (Muñoz, Liverpool's Jeremie Frimpong, City's Rico Lewis, Coventry's Jay Da Silva), every one a full-back or wing-back. In this league, being small is tolerated only in the wide lanes.

City Field a 196cm Pair and a 170cm Pair — and United Are the Shortest of the Big Six

The most interesting single construction belongs to Manchester City. Gianluigi Donnarumma and Erling Haaland (both 196cm) started alongside Phil Foden and Rico Lewis (both 170cm) — two players at each extreme in the same eleven. Everton fielded the other 196cm pair, Jarrad Branthwaite and Thierno Barry, on the spine of the team. Tottenham are the opposite case: from Antonín Kinský (191cm) down to Andy Robertson (178cm) their entire XI fits inside 13cm, the flattest build in the league.

Among the so-called Big Six, Chelsea rank highest at 2nd and Manchester United lowest at 16th — and United duly lost their opener 2-0 away to a Hull City side that ranks 17th here and defended in a 5-4-1. Height, evidently, is not destiny. By system, the four clubs in a 3-4-2-1 (Leeds, Chelsea, Forest, Palace) average 184.68cm against 183.82cm for the fourteen in a 4-2-3-1 — but those four finished 1st, 2nd, 6th and 18th on this table, so once again who you pick matters far more than the shape you pick.

Two Japanese players started the round: Daizen Maeda (173cm) in Ipswich's 2-1 win over Sunderland, and Daichi Kamada (180cm) in Crystal Palace's 2-0 defeat at Everton. Height, of course, is only one component of a result. Set-piece goals scored and conceded, dealing with crosses, and conversely the mobility to play out from the back — whether this ranking actually means anything will be settled over 38 rounds. Tap any club name to load its opening-round formation and rearrange the players yourself.

Note: the sample is the starting eleven named by each club for round one of the 2026-27 season, played 21-24 August 2026 — 220 players in total. Substitutes are excluded. Heights are simple averages rounded to two decimal places. No published height could be found for Aston Villa midfielder George Hemmings, so that club's average, and the league-wide figures, are calculated from the remaining players (219 in total). Clubs on identical figures are listed in no particular order. Eredivisie and J1 figures are compiled under the same conditions (round one, starting XI only). Compiled by Fomelabo.