Forget Pascal Groß – Brighton’s £25m next midfield star could be on his way to the Amex already

Let’s start with the bad news for Brighton & Hove Albion fans – long-serving midfielder Pascal Groß, the Seagulls’ great creative force for seven consecutive seasons, is increasingly likely to leave Sussex this summer with Borussia Dortmund working to engineer a move for the 33-year-old Germany international, who has just one year left on his current contract.

Finding a direct replacement will be extremely hard. Groß notched up a remarkable 10 assists over the 2023/24 Premier League season and has hit double figures for combined goals and assists in three of the past four years. A superb passer with tremendous vision, players of his quality and experience are hard to come by and Brighton will feel his absence.

But that brings us on to the good news, because sources in the Netherlands suggest that Brighton have already found a possible replacement – Feyenoord’s Mats Wieffer, a Dutch international who won the Eredivise in 2022/23 and the KNVB Cup this year under new Liverpool head coach Arne Slot. And while he isn’t a like-for-like swap for the outgoing Groß, he is blessed with some qualities the veteran doesn’t have and seems to line up beautifully with Brighton’s broader strategic vision.

This isn’t a youth signing, in comparison to many of the Seagulls’ recent moves in the transfer market. Wieffer is 24 and while he missed out on the eventual Euro 2024 squad, he has nine caps for the Netherlands and a goal against Gibraltar. In other words, Wieffer is not a developmental prospect but a player who should head straight into the first team and, all going well, stay there for years to come.

And while he doesn’t have Groß’s passing range or accuracy – few do, even at the top level of football – and doesn’t contribute quite so many assists directly (three in the Eredivisie last year) he does a colossal amount of work for the team and has been a key cog in a highly effective Feyenoord attack.

Looking at Wieffer’s heat maps is almost pointless – they’re just one gigantic red circle laid over most of the pitch. His energy and stamina are remarkable, and he will work to get almost everywhere, forcing turnovers and making life hard off the ball while offering himself for passes and making darting runs when in possession. If one wants to criticise Wieffer, one could say that he’s a jack of all trades type of player, but he also seems to do just about everything well.

A hugely effective pressing player, he was averaging around 4.5 turnovers per match in the Netherlands, which is a massive number by almost any standards, and even threw in nearly 2.5 blocked shots per game and more than three successful aerial duels, which is something you almost never see from midfielders. Simply put, when he needs to defend he will work his socks off to get the ball back and if isolated from the play, he will bust a gut to get back and make a centre-half of himself to ensure the opposition can’t get a chance out of him.

And going forward he’s a fine technician and an impressive dribbler who finds space easily too, meaning he helps his team get forward consistently throughout the game. All of that suits the way Brighton have been set up to play since the Graham Potter days down to a tee, and one assumes that new head coach Fabian Hürzeler, whose methods and style are similar to those of Roberto de Zerbi, would have plenty of use for a player with Wieffer’s energy and skill set.

And while he isn’t quite the creative force that Groß has been, he still generates high volumes of shooting chances for his team, still gets into dangerous areas in and around the box, and still chips in with some goals of his own – five this past season for Feyenoord, which was his best return yet.

The article that sparked this story didn’t have a transfer fee for us, although previous rumours that linked Wieffer with clubs like AC Milan suggested that something north of €30m (£25.3m) could be required to secure his services – not a bad profit for Feyenoord given that he only cost a little over £400,000 when he arrived from Excelsior two seasons ago, but also not necessarily a prohibitive price for a profitable team like Brighton or an excessive fee for a player who offers so much in so many areas.

There is always a slight question mark over players coming in from leagues like the Eredivisie, and plenty of players who have shone at that level go on to struggle after taking a step up, but Wieffer has been one of the very best players in Dutch domestic football for the past two years, a startlingly consistent performer who does a ton of work in defence and attack and who provides a dynamic, energetic presence. If Brighton are going to have say a painful goodbye to Groß, then Wieffer looks like the kind of player who takes the sting out of it.