The most underrated players of the 2024/25 Premier League season - featuring Forest, Wolves & Everton stars

With the season coming to a close, plenty of journalists will be gearing up to cast their ballots for the best players of the year and immense amounts of ink will be justly spilled in praise of players like Mohamed Salah that have lit up the Premier League season – but every year, there are all too many players who have played quite brilliantly and yet whose achievements will fall under the radar.

Earlier this week, I hosted an episode of Shots! TV show The Premier League Panel in which my guests and I spent half an hour discussing the most underrated players of the season – but our time slot simply didn’t give us the time to shine a light on every under-appreciated star of the last year that we wanted.

WATCH: The Premier League Panel - the most underrated players of the season

So I decided to take the ball and run with it, and pick out a handful of the players that I believe deserve far more credit than they’re getting. Some are players who play for unfashionable (or simply bad) sides and who have spent too much time being last on Match of the Day. Others have been doing the grunt work in support of flashier colleagues. But they all deserve their due…

Mateus Fernandes – Southampton

Southampton have, let’s face it, been horrible this season, flirting with the title of the worst team in Premier League history and generally making it tricky for anyone to come out of the campaign with any credit. Fernandes, alone, has risen above that.

The 20-year-old summer signing has been a revelation, growing into a role as a true box-to-box midfielder with a fabulous passing range, dynamism with the ball at his feet and the ability to force turnovers and win possession back right across the midfield.

Watching Saints games has often felt like watching one young man trying to carry ten other players, Atlas-like, on his shoulders, but his effort levels have rarely dropped and he has been the only consistently good performer in red and white stripes. For some reason it’s Tyler Dibling getting scouts’ pulses racing, and perhaps he’ll turn out to be the brighter talent down the line, but it’s Fernandes who’s been far more impressive over the past 10 months.

Jan Paul van Hecke – Brighton & Hove Albion

It feels like everyone is vaguely aware that Van Hecke is a very handy player, but his name so seldom comes up in conversation amongst pundits and his contributions towards an injury-ravaged Brighton defence have gone largely unnoticed.

It’s not just his skill as a defender that stands out, although his positioning is impressive and he’s strong both in the air on the ground, but the way that he uses possession. The Dutchman is a superb passer who has only completed fewer long balls than two other defenders in the division (Virgil van Dijk and Joachim Andersen) and incredibly cool and composed with the ball at his feet, with the skill to drive the ball into midfield as well as pass it.

In other words, he’s the complete modern defender, largely lacking in weaknesses and playing a technical level most dedicated playmakers would be jealous of – which makes it a bit of a mystery that bigger teams aren’t snapping around him as they are with other defenders.

Elliot Anderson – Nottingham Forest

The nature of Anderson’s transfer to the City Ground – which had everything to do with profit and sustainability rules and precious little to do with which players Newcastle and Nottingham Forest actually wanted – didn’t necessarily promise a bright future in red for Anderson, but he’s been a key contributor to what will remain a wildly impressive season even if Forest do miss out on the Champions League.

Endlessly energetic, versatile and both willing and able to impact all three thirds of the pitch, Anderson is towards the top of the stats sheets for defending, creating chance, dribbling… Just about everything except actually scoring goals, really.

Because he isn’t flashy and because he doesn’t score a bunch, Anderson has perhaps gone under the radar a little while the likes of Chris Wood and Morgan Gibbs-White get all the plaudits, but Forest wouldn’t be in with a shout of Champions League football without their summer signing. An England call-up, anyone?

Jean-Ricner Bellegarde – Wolverhampton Wanderers

I could have named half a dozen Wolves players, in truth, such is the nature of the quietly impressive turnaround that’s been performed under Vitor Pereira, and players like Emmanuel Agbadou, Toti Gomes and Jørgen Strand Larsen all deserve shout-outs, but Bellegarde’s is a name mentioned far less often than it should be.

Without Bellegarde, Wolves have struggled to turn defence and possession in midfield into attack – with him, they have the dynamism and drive to get the ball up towards the forwards quickly and effectively. Pereira’s machine has really relied upon one of his least starry names.

Highlighting that fact is a nerdy stat: Bellegarde is 15th in the division for ‘goal-creating actions’ (ie direct involvement in moves which lead to a goal) despite playing for a team in the bottom half. He’s been partly responsible for more goals than Cole Palmer, Morgan Rogers, Phil Foden, Anthony Gordon… You get the gist. It’s a long list.

Mikkel Damsgaard – Brentford

One of the few players ahead of Bellegarde on that list? Damsgaard, whose slow start to life at the Brentford Community Stadium means he’s ended up being a little overlooked despite flourishing under Thomas Frank this season.

When Damsgaard first moved to the Premier League, it was off the back of a brilliant Euro 2020 campaign in which he had taken over the stricken Christian Eriksen’s role as Denmark’s creator-in-chief and filled the void superbly – scoring a fine goal against England, lest we forget. It set a bar he didn’t clear at first, but he’s hurdling over it now.

The now 24-year-old has racked up 10 league assists without much fuss being made, and has been notching up tackles, interceptions and turnovers as well, winning possession as efficiently as he uses it. Any initial disappointment over Damsgaard’s performances has long faded, but the media at large hasn’t really caught up.

A nod should also be given to Mark Flekken, here, who has made more saves per match than any other goalkeeper with at least five appearances and has a top five save percentage of 74.2%. Very impressive.

James Tarkowski – Everton

It isn’t easy getting headlines at Everton these days. Since the club appointed David Moyes and pulled away from the relegation zone, the only real stories have concerned off-field matters – but Tarkowski has been outstanding all season.

Always a model of consistency, the 32-year-old is having arguably his best ever season, outperforming his rather starrier defensive colleague Jarrad Branthwaite by almost every metric that’s important for a centre-back without getting many plaudits.

Perhaps that’s just the curse of being a veteran defender at a somewhat unfashionable club, as Everton are right now, but while just about everyone respects Tarkowski as one of the Premier League’s most reliable players, the quality of his season seems to have gone unnoticed.

I’ll leave it there for now. There are plenty of other rock solid players who probably deserve a mention, but word counts exist for a reason. Which other players deserve a nod? Who have I wrongly failed to recognise? Should I have become the two hundredth journalist to write about how underrated Ryan Gravenberch is? Well, we have a comments section should you wish to register your nominations…