New Manchester United signing Matheus Cunha ranks higher than Mohamed Salah and Alexander Isak for ‘big-chance’ conversion and is used to bearing the weight of an underperforming side.
According to analysis of Opta data by The Athletic, United’s new £62.5m man is statistically more clinical than some of the Premier League’s most lethal attackers.
Opta use the term ‘big chance’ to refer to a situation where a player should reasonably be expected to score, and Cunha’s conversion from these positions last season came out at 60%.
That puts him above Chelsea forward Cole Palmer’s 53%, Newcastle United dangerman Isak’s 49% and Liverpool’s talisman Salah’s 48%.
Stats like these can paint a false picture of what’s really happening out there on the pitch, but Cunha’s numbers are incredibly heartening for United fans starved of a clinical goalscorer.
They are all the more impressive given Wolverhampton Wanderers’ general lack of quality; all three of the players compared to Cunha operated in far better teams.
The Brazilian scored 15 times and provided six assists for a beleaguered Wolves side, directly contributing to more than a third of their total goals.
The Athletic also found that Cunha took nearly 30% of all Wolves’ shots on goal last season, and was head-and-shoulders above his team-mates for receiving the ball in dangerous areas, passing into the box and carrying the ball forward.
United, then, seem to have recruited an effective player used to doing a lot of the hard work himself which is unfortunately a vital trait in a flagship arrival into Ruben Amorim’s anaemic attacking department.
The Athletic find that Cunha will slot in nicely as the left-sided attacking midfielder in the 3-4-2-1 system, citing his willingness to drop deep and drive with the ball.
They also identify the 26-year-old as an explosive player who knows “when to race forward or decelerate” and is good with his distribution.
Combined with his remarkable injury record – he did not miss a match through injury last season, although did spend time on the sidelines through suspension – his self-sufficient creativity should make him a real difference maker at Old Trafford.
He’s certainly taken the scenic route to being touted as part of the solution to United’s not-inconsiderable problems.
The Athletic quote Cunha’s former Coritiba team-mate Henrique Vermudt, who said: “When he arrived — in the under-15s — we could all see he was talented, but nothing out of this world. He was just a good, solid player.
“But when he started playing for the under-20s, he changed. He turned from water into wine. He came back from his holidays in Paraiba and he was just… different. We all joked with him: ‘Man, what did you do to get so good all of a sudden?’”
Whatever it was, United will be praying it’s still working come the start of the new season.
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Joe Ponting
Joe has spent more than half his life writing about football and all of it following United. As a child he told a doctor his name was ‘Paul Scholes’, but could never pick a pass like him no matter how much he tried.
