Underrated gem Pascal Gross now Dream Team’s most in-form midfielder – overlooked by 98% of managers

WHAT will it take for Dream Team managers to acknowledge Pascal Gross' (£3.9m) qualities?

Brighton's No13 currently features in just 1.8% of teams, making him considerably less popular than Kaoru Mitoma (£3.7m) and Solly March (£3.8m).

The latter appears in 10.2% of teams while the Japan international is the fifth-most selected asset in his position overall with an ownership of 19.3%.

And yet it's Gross who is the Seagulls' leading midfielder having moved onto 38 points with another fine performance at the weekend.

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The 32-year-old extended his impressive record against Manchester United when he scored Brighton's second goal at Old Trafford on Saturday, in some style too.

A deft feint and shimmy completely foxed Lisandro Martinez (£3.2m) and opened up the necessary space to drill a shot into the net and cement the visitors' superiority.

Gross took the Red Devils for nine points when all was said and done to promote himself up to fifth in the overall midfield rankings, with a Europa League fixture against AEK Athens still to come before Gameweek 5 is complete.

One could waste hours debating the subjective matter of underrated Premier League players but few individuals could mount as compelling a case for themselves as Gross.

A neat technician and one of the league's better set-piece takers, he is among several players who have taken their game to another level under Roberto De Zerbi.

Gross scored nine league goals last season and with two in five outings already this term he may well hit double figures for the first time in his career come May.

Mitoma and March are both excellent options too but it's Gross who leads the way among Brighton midfielders in terms of shots on target, tackles (joint), bonus points and total points.

So why is being overlooked by 98.2% of Dream Team bosses?

It may simply be because he isn't perceived as being as fashionable as someone like the more youthful Mitoma, a relatively new revelation with a YouTube-friendly highlight reel - not to mention his degree in dribbling.

Signed in 2017, Gross was a regular for the Brighton outfit that finished closer to the relegation zone than the European places and he wasn't much of a goalscorer during that time either.

He's not particularly fast or athletic and he's only just made his international debut for Germany - it's rare for a player to earn their first cap for a top nation in their 30s.

But Dream Team gaffers should discard a lot of this contextual information - his current numbers don't lie.

In fact, Gross is technically the most in-form midfielder Dream Team has to offer right now having averaged 9.7 point-per-game across his last three outings - edging out the likes of Eberechi Eze (£3.6m), Bukayo Saka (£6.2m), James Ward-Prowse (£4.3m) and James Maddison (£4.3m).

And the list of midfielders with fewer points than Gross at this stage includes Martin Odegaard (£5m), Rodri (£4.2m) and Bruno Fernandes (£6.1m) - who are all at least ten times as popular as De Zerbi's reliable lieutenant.