By Opta Analyst | Created at 2026-10-14 15:15:17 | Updated at 2026-10-17 20:21:28
3 days ago
Brighton & Hove Albion have made an excellent start to the 2026-27 Premier League season, and their 35-year-old creative spark has been at the centre of it.
Age catches up with all of us, but it seems like footballers are getting labelled as ‘past their best’ earlier and earlier these days.
There are even players in their late 20s being hit with the infamous ‘his legs have gone’ accusation, a claim which often just seems to mean ‘he’s not playing very well and is over the age of 25’.
However, some Premier League ‘uncs’ are fighting back, and this past weekend was a particularly good one for some golden oldies.
At 36 years and 115 days, Jordan Henderson became the oldest Chelsea player to be directly involved in three goals in a Premier League game, overtaking Gianluca Vialli (33y 245d), with his two goals and an assist against Bournemouth.
Meanwhile, another Premier League player of a similar vintage was also instrumental in his team’s victory. Like Henderson, Brighton’s Pascal Groß probably sometimes feels a bit like the famous Steve Buscemi ‘how do you do fellow kids?’ meme from 30 Rock when lining up alongside his much younger teammates. But he is more than justifying his place in the team.
After producing two assists in the 5-0 thrashing of Coventry City, and another in the 3-0 win over Arsenal before the international break, at 35 years and 117 days, Groß became the oldest player to provide an assist in three successive Premier League games since Ryan Giggs in February 2012 (38y 68d) when he set up Maxim De Cuyper for the opener in a 2-0 win at Sunderland.
It was the latest in a string of excellent performances by the German international since his return to Brighton last season. They say you should never go back, but Groß is absolutely thriving in his second spell in East Sussex.
Between joining the club from Ingolstadt in 2017 and leaving for Borussia Dortmund in 2024, Groß managed 32 goals and 52 assists in 261 games for Brighton. Since his return in January of this year, he has five goals and seven assists in 30 games, but eight of those goal involvements (four goals, four assists) have come in just nine games this season.
Groß is rolling back the years for his manager Fabian Hürzeler – who is two years his junior – helping Brighton to make a strong start to the 2026-27 campaign.
“I said, I think in my last press conference, that you can compare him a little bit with a good wine. The older he gets, the better he is,” Hürzeler told reporters after the win over Arsenal.
“He’s not only a player who makes his teammates better, he’s not only a player who really understands the game so well. I think the things you can’t measure are the things we see in the daily business and on the training ground.
“He has the skill of creating social bonds between all the players we have. We have so many different nationalities, so many different generations, and he has an understanding of all these dynamics. He brings these different backgrounds together and I think that’s something we sometimes underestimate.”
The Seagulls are flying high, sitting third in the Premier League, and through to the fourth round of the League Cup after a comeback win over Manchester United at Old Trafford. They have won their last three league games by a combined aggregate of 10-0, including the aforementioned 3-0 thumping of champions Arsenal.
And Groß is not just adding vital experience in the midfield, but is pulling the strings and producing moments of quality when it matters.
He has created 18 chances in the Premier League this season, the most of any player, while six of those have been defined as ‘big chances’ – a chance from which a team would be reasonably expected to score – which has only been bettered by Nottingham Forest’s Morgan Gibbs-White (7).
While he takes set-pieces, not all of Groß’ chances are coming from dead-balls; he has created 13 chances from open play, which, again, only Gibbs-White (15) can better in the Premier League.
That follows on from his previous spell at the club. In each of his seven seasons with Brighton prior to joining Dortmund in August 2024, Groß created a minimum of 52 chances in the Premier League. The only other player to have made as many in a single campaign for the club in the competition is Solly March (67 in 2022-23).
He remains as cultured on the ball as ever, and while he isn’t topping the charts for line-breaking passes, he is making incisive and dangerous passes when he does attempt them.
Groß has made 62 line-breaking passes in the Premier League this season, the joint-41st most, but only Bruno Fernandes (19) and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall (14) have made more line-breaking passes leading to a shot in the next 10 seconds than him (13), while he has the joint-most line-breaking passes leading to a goal in the next 10 seconds (3).
Anyone who has seen Groß play will know how good he is on the ball, but one stat that may surprise people, especially considering his age, is that he’s covered the most distance of any player in the Premier League this season (72.5km).
Distance covered is not a tell-all statistic. Covering lots of ground is not necessarily a sign that a player is working harder than others. But for a player of his age to have run further than anyone else is still worthy of note
One reason for the impressive amount of distance he’s covered is that he has played every minute of every game for Brighton this season. That shows not only how vital he is to Hürzeler, but also that despite being the wrong side of 35, he can still do it at the top level without needing his minutes managed.
Before hosting fierce rivals Crystal Palace on Sunday, Brighton begin their UEFA Conference League campaign against Kauno Žalgiris on Thursday, hoping to follow the trend of Premier League teams lifting the trophy after West Ham, Chelsea and Palace did so in three of the last four seasons.
They are heavy favourites to do so with the Opta supercomputer, and with Groß leading the way, they have every reason to be confident.
There are many star players in the Premier League right now, but despite his age and general low profile, Brighton’s midfield maestro should be getting as much recognition right now as anyone.
You might say that to ignore him would be Groß negligence.
Enjoy this? Add Opta Analyst as a preferred source by clicking here.
Subscribe to our football newsletter to receive exclusive weekly content. You should also follow our social accounts over on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
