Matt Furniss from Opta Analyst looks at Matheus Cunha's statistics at Wolves and assesses his potential impact at Manchester United.
The dust has barely settled on Manchester United’s most disappointing season in decades and they’re seemingly already making moves to address their deficiencies.
On Sunday 1 June Man Utd announced the signing of Wolverhampton Wanderers forward Matheus Cunha, he becomes Ruben Amorim's first arrival of the summer.
The Brazil international would appear to be a pretty sound fit for Amorim’s 3-4-3 system, and he’s proven over the past two years that he’s more than capable of impressing in the Premier League.
United fans may not have to wait long to see Cunha in action. He could be part of the squad travelling to the USA for the 2025 Summer Series, running from 26 July to 3 August, beginning with a match against West Ham United at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
Here, we look at the impact he’s enjoyed at Wolverhampton Wanderers and how that’s led Man Utd securing the forward's signature.
Leader of the pack
Cunha has undoubtedly been one of Wolves’ key attacking players, if not their most important. His third season at the club has proven to be his best in terms of attacking output.
The Brazilian scored 15 Premier League goals – a career best for a single league campaign - and registered six assists in 2024/25, giving him 21 goal involvements, two more than he managed in 2023/24 (19).
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Cunha features in the top 10 this season for both proportion of team goals scored (27.8 per cent – ninth) and proportion scored or assisted (38.9 per cent – ninth) in the Premier League. That's just like in 2023/24, when he ranked ninth for proportion of team goals scored (24.0 per cent) and fourth for proportion of team goals involved in (38.0 per cent involved in).
While Cunha didn’t have much of an impact in his first half-season at Wolves after joining on loan from Atletico Madrid in January 2023 (one goal, two assists in 17 appearances), he’s been a revelation at the club in his two seasons since signing permanently.
With 39 non-penalty goal involvements in 65 league appearances since the start of 2023/24, Cunha ranks behind only seven players for his attacking output in the division over that time, and none of those play for clubs who’ve been in a genuine relegation battle. That tally is also more than double any other Wolves player across those two seasons (Jorgen Strand Larsen the next most with 18).
Cunha has attempted 183 shots, with 82 of those on target since the start of last season, far exceeding the output of any other Wolves player. In fact, across the Premier League over that time, no player has had a greater proportion of a team’s total shots than Cunha has for Wolves (21.3 per cent).
Five of his 27 goals (18.5 per cent) have come from outside the box, which is a tally only six players have bettered since the start of last season.
However, this does raise one question...
Is Cunha's form sustainable?
In 2024/25, Cunha scored 15 goals (none from the penalty spot) from 8.6 non-penalty Expected Goals (xG). So, he scored nearly double what would've been expected of the "average" player from the shots he’s had. This follows a similar pattern to 2023/24, when he also exceeded his non-penalty xG (+2.3).
Over those two seasons, only Phil Foden (+10.5) has outperformed his non-penalty xG total by more than Cunha (+8.7).
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Consistently overperforming on xG models is possible but usually restricted to only the elite finishers in the game. Cunha himself may say he is in this group, but the phrase "what goes up, must come down" springs to mind.
Looking at some of the best forwards still playing in the top five European leagues shows how hard it is to sustainably score at a higher rate than your xG.
Only seven players across the top five European leagues have recorded at least 10.0 non-penalty xG in as many as five of the past seven seasons and seen their goal tally exceed that xG more often than not: Kylian Mbappe (seven times out of seven seasons), Harry Kane (6/7), Robert Lewandowski (5/7), Lionel Messi (4/5), Wissam Ben Yedder (4/6), Mohamed Salah (4/7), Lautaro Martinez (4/6) and Erling Haaland (4/5) – players mostly considered among the best forwards in Europe in recent memory.
For Cunha to consistently outperform his xG season-on-season isn’t out of the question, but it’s unlikely.
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Ball-carrying ability
Cunha isn’t all about goalscoring, though; that's obvious to anyone who watches him play regularly.
One of his main strengths is his ability to run with the ball and progress upfield. Since the start of last season, Cunha is among a group of just 15 players to have both attempted (55) and created (38) 35+ shots for his team(s) following a ball carry, while he’s one of only 12 players to have been involved in at least 12 goals following a carry.
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His ability to carry the ball over long distances has been helpful for a Wolves team who have often played with a low block and looked to counter opponents over the last two seasons.
Cunha has averaged 8.8 metres when travelling with the ball upfield since the start of last season in the Premier League. Of players who’ve travelled at least 2,000m via progressive carries in that time, only Anthony Elanga (10.4m) and Chiedozie Ogbene (10.8m) have averaged greater distance with their progressive carries in the competition.
Cunha's ball-carrying ability means he ranks high for take-ons, too. Only two players – Jeremy Doku and Mohammed Kudus – have attempted more take-ons in the Premier League since the start of last season than Cunha (290), while he also ranks in the top four for those exclusively in the opposition's half (213).
Disciplinary record
It’s difficult to talk about Cunha without discussing his much-publicised disciplinary record in 2024/25, though.
This season, he missed six matches across two spells, after being banned for incidents against Ipswich Town in December and AFC Bournemouth in an FA Cup tie in March. The suspension period could have been even longer if Cunha hadn’t offered to pay for some new spectacles for the Ipswich security staff member he became entangled with.
Nevertheless, only the Bournemouth incident led to a red card being given out, and Cunha has been shown 15 cards in total since the start of last season in all competitions for Wolves (14 yellows, one red) which isn't especially alarming. It's not even inside the top 50 Premier League players in that timeframe, with the most-carded players (Moises Caicedo – 27 yellows, and Edson Alvarez – 24 yellows, two reds) being cautioned far more than Cunha.
It must be said that ill discipline hasn’t been an issue for Cunha throughout his career, either. Last season was the first since 2020/21 at Hertha BSC in Germany that he’d exceeded five yellow cards in a competitive season (nine), although that number did lead the team rankings that campaign.
So, although this could be an area Man Utd look to emphasise the importance of improving in, it doesn’t appear to be a huge concern at the moment.
How Cunha fits Man Utd
One of the most appealing aspects of Cunha’s potential move to Man Utd is how well he seems to fit into Amorim’s system.
Cunha has already spent much of this season playing in a similar setup, with both Gary O’Neil and then Vitor Pereira deploying a 3-4-2-1 formation at Wolves – the exact same system Amorim is firmly committed to.
Cunha has typically operated as the left-sided No 10 in that shape, playing 61 per cent of his minutes there in 2024/25.
Cunha's minutes played per position 24/25
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In possession, that formation often shifts into a 3-3-2-2 — a structure Wolves have used 34.1 per cent of the time under Pereira, and one that United have transitioned into 32.4 per cent of the time under Amorim.
Within that 3-3-2-2, Cunha has mostly played as one of the two advanced forwards, but he’s also shown comfort dropping deeper into a supporting midfield role.
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Much has been made of Amorim inheriting a squad with several players unsuited to his preferred system. Alejandro Garnacho, for instance, is reportedly on the way out after struggling to adapt as one of the dual No 10s. If his apparent replacement, Cunha, is landed, the Portuguese manager should have no similar complaints.
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