Manchester United "will sign" Matheus Cunha. They shouldn't!

Manchester United’s first signing of the summer appears all but wrapped up. All of Fabrizio Romano, Sky Sports and FootBiz are reporting that the club has agreed to personal terms with Matheus Cunha and will trigger his £62.5m release clause when the transfer window opens. It’s yet another bonkers sale for Wolverhampton Wanderers, who pulled in £90m from shipping out Pedro Neto and Max Kilman last summer.

As Ted put it on the Rebuilding Manchester United podcast, “I’m not touching Cunha at that release clause. I’m not touching him within 50% of that.” Once again, we’re about to have the same conversation about a Manchester United transfer. Cunha is a decent player, but there’s not a lot of evidence that he actually gives the team something they’re missing, and he’s way too expensive.

Let’s take a look at why.

Before we get going, a quick update on the rebuilding series. The Boys did the Rebuilding Tottenham podcast yesterday, wrapping up our third team.

If you missed the newsletters, Part 1 on the state of the squad is here, and Part 2 on who they should target in the transfer market is here. We’ll be taking a quick break from these as the team rotates around some post-season holidays, and return with more teams in June.

Cunha’s put together a sensational highlight reel this season, scoring 15 goals, with quite a few of them being absolute bangers from outside the box. He’s one of the world’s great xG overperformers this year, recording those goals off just 6.87 xG. He’s getting a remarkably low percentage of his shots from high value area inside the box, and takes a ton of shots from outside of the box and wide, acute angles.

I think Cunha is definitely much better than the average attacker at shooting from outside of the box, but this is not a sustainable finishing rate, even for an elite shooter. This is a Messi or Ronaldo level of overperformance, without the Messi/Ronaldo level of huge chances from within 12 yards. Cunha will not do this again.

His key passes map is quite a bit more encouraging. Cunha is a solid playmaker, and has set up a variety of chances for his teammates inside the box. There’s a couple great through ball assists, plenty of high value passes to feet, and on the rare occasion he hits a lofted ball for a header, it looks like a good decision.

The bullish case for Cunha being a good signing for Man United is a lot more about his playmaking than his goals. If United adds a top striker for him to pass to, Cunha’s assist total could go up by more than his goal total inevitably goes down.

But the big problem here is the value for money, both in straight up production per pound terms, and relative to players who are already on Manchester United’s books. For instance, here’s Cunha compared to Alejandro Garnacho, who’s 6 years younger than Cunha. He doesn’t provide the passing value, but he’s getting higher quality shots, pressing more, and providing more dribbling value.

But maybe Ruben Amorim views the passing piece as non-negatable for that position, and does not think Garnacho will ever fit in to his team. OK, here’s Cunha compared to what Marcus Rashford was able to do in his time with Aston Villa this spring.

Garnacho and Rashford have been linked to sales this summer, with potential fees in the range of £40m. That’s more than £20m less than they’re going to pay for Cunha, for players that offer almost the exact same level of production. Selling one of Garnacho or Rashford to buy Cunha is spending £20m to run on a hamster wheel.

United, by the admission of their owner, cannot afford to do this. Jim Ratcliffe claims the club was at risk of running out of money last year. If a club that is currently 16th in the Premier League and broke aspires to be competing for a Premier League title in a short period of time, it can’t make any more expensive mistakes. Buying Cunha has a significant opportunity cost when it comes to spending money on other parts of the squad.

These are not criticisms of Matheus Cunha. He’s a talented footballer who has turned in a couple of very solid seasons for Wolves, and he’s probably good enough to make positive contributions to Man United. But he’s not significantly better than what they already have in the same position. They have much bigger problems, and signing Cunha hurts their ability to address them.

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