Opta Analyst's Matt Furniss looks at why Wolverhampton Wanderers' Matheus Cunha has been their best for the last two seasons and if they can keep hold of him for another campaign.
Expect to see Matheus Cunha’s name a lot this summer.
Across three seasons at Wolverhampton Wanderers, the Brazilian forward has proven himself as one of the Premier League’s most influential players outside of a select few who are battling for UEFA Champions League football at the top of the table.
Now, after helping to secure Wolves’ safety for another top-flight season, the usual transfer speculation is heating up in preparation for the summer window of activity.
Reported admiration for Cunha from other clubs is nothing new, nor is it a surprise. Of course, there’s no sign that Wolves are willing to let the 25-year-old leave either, with their own aspirations for a more positive season under Vitor Pereira in 2025/26 undoubtedly more achievable with Cunha on board.
Sure, Cunha’s had his well-reported disciplinary issues this season - he has missed a total of six matches through suspension - but the positives outweigh the negatives when analysing his impact at Molineux.
Leader of the pack
Cunha is undoubtedly one of Wolves' key attacking players, if not the most important. His third season at the club could prove to be his best in terms of attacking output.
With five matches left to play in 2024/25, Cunha is only one away from his best tally of goal involvements in a Premier League season. He’s been involved in 18 already this season (19 in 2023/24), with 14 of those being goals – that’s a career best for a single league campaign.
Cunha features in the top 10 this season for both proportion of team goals scored (29.2 per cent – eighth) and proportion scored or assisted (37.5 per cent – 10th) in the Premier League. That’s just like last season, when he ranked ninth (24 per cent of goals scored) and fourth (38 per cent involved in) respectively.
While he didn’t have much of an impact in his first half-season after joining on loan from Atletico Madrid in January 2023 (one goal, two assists in 17 appearances), he’s been a revelation at Wolves in his two seasons since signing permanently.
With 36 non-penalty goal involvements in 60 Premier League appearances since the start of 2023/24, Cunha ranks behind only six players for his attacking output in the division over that time. That tally is more than double any other Wolves player across those two seasons (Hwang Hee-chan has the next most, with 16).
Cunha has attempted 162 shots, with 75 of those on target, for Wolves since the start of last season. This output far exceeds any other Wolves player.
In fact, across the Premier League over that time, only Cole Palmer (20.6 per cent of Chelsea’s shots) and Liam Delap (26.8 per cent of Ipswich Town’s shots on target) have higher shares of a single club's totals than Cunha’s 20.4 per cent of Wolves’ shots and 24.9 per cent of their shots on target.
Five of his 26 goals (19.2 per cent) have come from outside the box, which is a tally only five players have bettered since the start of last season.
However this does raise one question.
Is Cunha's form sustainable?
In 2024/25, Cunha has scored 14 goals from an Expected Goals (xG) of 7.3. He’s 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) and Chris Wood (+9.4) have outperformed their non-penalty xG total by more than Cunha (+9.0).
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 (Opta don’t record confidence as a metric, sorry), 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.
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, he’s among a group of just 20 players to have both attempted (46) and created (31) 30+ shots for his team(s) following a ball carry, while he’s one of only 14 players to have been involved in at least 10 goals following a carry.
His ability to carry the ball over vast distances on the pitch is helpful for a Wolves team who have often played with a low block and look to counter-attack opponents over the last two seasons.
Cunha has averaged 9.0 metres when travelling with the ball upfield since the start of last season in the Premier League. Of players to travel at least 2,000m via progressive carries in that time, only Anthony Elanga (10.8m) and Chiedozie Ogbene (10.8m) have averaged greater distance with their progressive carries in the competition.
His ball-carrying ability means he ranks high for take-ons, too. Only three players – Jeremy Doku, Mohammed Kudus and Dejan Kulusevski – have attempted more take-ons in the Premier League since the start of last season than Cunha, both all over the pitch, with 276, and exclusively in the opposition’s half (203).
Disciplinary history
It’s difficult to talk about Cunha without discussing his much-publicised disciplinary record in 2024/25, though.
This season has seen him miss six matches across two spells after being banned for incidents against Ipswich in December and AFC Bournemouth in an FA Cup tie in March. That could have been even longer if he hadn’t offered to pay for some new glasses 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’s 14 cards shown in total since the start of last season in all competitions for Wolves (13 yellows, one red) 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 – 25 yellows, and Edson Alvarez – 23 yellows, two reds) on nine more than Cunha’s total.
It must be said that ill discipline hasn’t been an issue for Cunha throughout his career, either. Last season, when he was shown five yellow cards, was the first since 2020/21 at Hertha BSC in Germany that he’d exceeded five bookings in a competitive campaign, although that number did lead the team rankings.
Decreasing reliance?
Cunha is undoubtedly one of Wolves' most talented players, that’s not up for debate. However, following his recent absences for aforementioned disciplinary issues, the club have become less reliant on him.
Wolves have just won five consecutive top-flight matches for the first time since the 1970/71 season. Adding the 1-1 home draw with Everton before this run, they are unbeaten in their last six Premier League games. Cunha has played just 109 of the possible 540 minutes in these games.
Pereira’s side have scored 11 goals since the start of March in the Premier League, and Cunha hasn’t even been on the pitch for nine of them. Jorgen Strand Larsen has stepped up with five goals in their last six games, while Rayan Ait-Nouri, Jean-Ricner Bellegarde and Pablo Sarabia have all chipped in for chance creation, with 12, eight and six respectively.
It’s easy to see why Cunha is considered Wolves’ biggest threat, but the last two months show they can cope just fine without him too.
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