Building a competitive Dream Team XI around Erling Haaland, Mohamed Salah and Cole Palmer

ERLING HAALAND (£8.5m) and Cole Palmer (£6m) are comfortably the two most-popular players in Dream Team ahead of the new season.

Manchester City’s No9 features in 57.8% of teams at the time of writing despite the fact he’s the most-expensive player in the game by a full £1.5m.

Mohamed Salah (£7m) is the next most-costly asset but with Liverpool enjoying favourable fixtures from Gameweek 1 until the end of September, he too is expected to be a major player.

There are several other top-tier performers available for selection but the ownership stats coupled with the starting prices have created a ‘big three’ in Haaland, Salah and Palmer.

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The trio have a combined cost of £21.5million, which is 43% of the total budget.

Many gaffers will desperately be trying to find eight other players with the remaining 57% in an attempt to start the new campaign with an XI that features the three heavy hitters without sacrificing too much quality elsewhere.

Allow us to put forward some suggestions.

To offset the cost of ‘the big three’ we’ll need to find some bargains in other positions.

Dean Henderson (£2.5m) is set to be Crystal Palace’s first-choice goalkeeper and therefore appears reasonably priced.

The Eagles finished last season with six wins from their last seven games, during which time the England keeper endeared himself to Oliver Glasner with some solid displays.

Elsewhere, Emile Smith Rowe’s (£2.5m) transfer to Fulham has improved his viability considerably.

The 24-year-old was starved of minutes at Arsenal but should be a regular for the Cottagers.

A goal in pre-season bodes well for his future at Craven Cottage and Marco Silva’s troops could get out of the blocks sharply with fixtures against newly-promoted Leicester and Ipswich before the end of August.

In defence, Valentin Barco (£2m) could offer plenty of value for money if he begins the campaign as Brighton’s starting left-back as expected.

The 20-year-old Argentina international may not be a long-term pick as Pervis Estupinan (£3m) is due to recover from an ankle injury by mid-September but the first few Gameweeks is all that matters right now.

Barco may even take a few set-pieces, which is always useful.

Let’s plug in those three bargains for a combined cost of just £7m.

With the books all but balanced, we can now afford five players in the mid-range to pad out our XI with quality options.

Let’s start with Josko Gvardiol (£4.5m) as our premium defender.

The Manchester City left-back developed into an attacking force of nature at the back end of 2023/24 and Pep Guardiola will surely keep encouraging him to get forward.

Dream Team bosses are spoiled for choice in midfield and we can fork out £9m for two of the most-popular selections in Anthony Gordon (£4.5m) and Eberechi Eze (£4.5m).

The England pair combined for 23 goals, 24 assists and 503 Dream Team points last season.

Both Gordon and Eze are worthy of long stints in a competitive Dream Team but they’re particularly strong options out of the gate with Newcastle and Palace up against Southampton and Brentford respectively in Gameweek 1.

That leaves us £8m for a defender and a striker to complete our 3-4-3 formation.

Our first instinct is to prioritise attack with a £5m striker in the form of either Son Heung-min or Alexander Isak – the latter is hugely popular ahead of Gameweek 1.

That would leave us £3m for our last defender with Joachim Andersen, Ian Maatsen and Antonee Robinson among the leading candidates.

However, we’re more inclined to split the remaining budget evenly to recruit Pedro Porro (£4m) and Dominic Solanke (£4m).

Only Trent Alexander-Arnold (£5.5m) averaged more points-per-game than Tottenham’s right-back among defenders in 2023/24 while Bournemouth’s No9 scored 19 league goals last time out.

If the transfer rumour mill is to be believed, Porro and Solanke might be team-mates soon enough – the latter’s starting price of £4m will look rather generous if he suddenly becomes Spurs’ main striker.

Alternatively, we could split the difference and pair Marc Guehi (£3.5m) with Kai Havertz (£4.5m).

That’s how many gaffers are spending £8m of their initial budget but if pre-season is anything to go by, it wouldn’t be a surprise if Gabriel Jesus (£4.5m) led the line for Arsenal against Wolves on the opening weekend, reducing the German’s viability.

Here’s our XI in full…

We’re pretty happy with that.

The quality of Gvardiol and Porro offsets the Barco punt in defence, our midfield has multiple routes to points, and we haven’t compromised up front at all.

Many gaffers would probably do things differently but this exercise shows that combining Haaland, Salah and Palmer is very much possible.

Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk