I'm sick of saying the same thing about every Manchester United transfer

When Manchester United were wrapping up the signing of Matheus Cunha, we posted that he was OK but not worth anywhere near the £62m that Manchester United were paying for him. He raises their floor, but doesn’t get them closer to competing for the big trophies, and the opportunity cost of spending that much on him might hurt their ambitions long term.

With David Ornstein and others confirming that United have had a £65m + add-ons bid accepted by Brentford for Bryan Mbeumo… we’re about to do it all over again. It’s time to dig into the details of what Mbeumo did last season, and it’ll look like an awfully familiar statistical profile if you read the Cunha piece.

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Bryan Mbeumo had a breakout campaign last season, scoring 20 league goals for the first time in his career. But believe it or not, his xG per 90 was down significantly from the previous season. There’s not a lot of evidence that his xG overperformance from this year means he’s an elite finisher.

When it comes to the other components of his game, Mbeumo is very solid but not elite at everything. He adds decent passing, assisting and dribbling value to his team without doing any of them at the kind of level you’d expect from a £65m+ player.

His shot assist volume and locations are pretty nice, though, and he was unlucky to not get a couple more assists. He was, however, passing to Yoane Wissa. United do not currently have a quality striker, and paying nearly £130m for Cunha and Mbeumo makes it harder for them to buy one.

I took out the set piece key passes just to make the open play assist locations a bit more clear, but he was also a decent set piece taker. And since he’s left footed and United’s current primary set piece takers are all righties, this is a nice added bonus to his signing.

But then we come to The Problem. The reason Mbeumo is costing United so much money despite having 1 year left on his contract is his goal-scoring. While Mbeumo was a good attacking player with decent shot selection, that 20 goal number is a mirage. 5 of his goals were penalties, and Mbeumo only racked up 6.69 non-penalty xG last season. He and Matheus Cunha were the Premier League’s top two xG overperformers.

He might be a plus finisher, but not even Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo were plus finishers to this degree. This is not repeatable. United have been tricked into paying 15-20 goal scorer prices for 7-8 goal scorer players.

I don’t want to crap on Mbeumo (or Cunha), since he did not dictate his own transfer fee. He’s a good player. We previously suggested on this newsletter, before his goals explosion, that he’d make a great rotation forward for the likes of Liverpool and Arsenal at the £35-40m range.

Making £20m overpays for solid rotation players who are not stars is what United do every single transfer window. Their squad is full of these players, who they subsequently struggle to sell on, and as a result they underperform relative to their wages.

—KM

More transfer rumours

• Hey, speaking of alarming overpays for xG overperformers. Sunderland are close to signing Armand Lauriente from Serie B side Sassuolo. He scored 18 goals last season after never scoring more than 7 in a season previously. This is his shot chart. Alarming!

• I’m realizing this is devolving into a full on Negative Nancy newsletter where every single rumour is going to be me saying “don’t do that.” I swear it’s today’s rumours and not me waking up on the wrong side of the bed. But I also do not think Everton should pay £25m+ for Douglas Luiz.

• Chelsea are apparently “making Morgan Rogers their top transfer target” and he’s valued at £80m. Sounds like nonsense to me, given that Chelsea need to make sales to register the signings they’ve already made for UEFA competitions. But they always find a way to make it work, I guess.

• Parma have submitted a bid to Dortmund for American Gio Reyna, who’s been hobbled by constant injuries in his career. I hope he figures it out, he might be the most technically gifted player in the USMNT pool, but I would not recommend paying any transfer fee to acquire him.

• Bayern Munich are going to submit an increased bid to Liverpool for Luis Diaz, and they’ve agreed to give him a salary of €14m. Is money not real in Germany? That is so much money for Luis Diaz. Don’t do that!

• Spurs are interested in Bourenmouth center back Ilya Zabarnyi, who will cost more than the €62m bid PSG had rejected. I’m guessing this is only possible if Cuti Romero is sold for a similar fee.

• Leeds are in talks to sign winger Igor Paixao from Feyenoord, and he’s in a similar boat to the other guys we’ve talked about today. Pretty dramatic xG overperformer. But! He is a decently high volume shooter and talented dribbler, so I hate this much less. I haven’t seen a fee mentioned, but this is a generally good profile of winger for bottom-half Prem teams to target.

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