How Man United’s deal for Matheus Cunha warped the transfer market

On June 2, 2025, Manchester United announced an agreement for the £62.5 million signing of Wolverhampton Wanderers forward Matheus Cunha. United activated his release clause, agreed to pay the sum in three installments and, 10 days later, the Brazil international was presented in his new shirt.

Despite being one of the first transfers to go through this summer, this was no hurried deal based on the Club World Cup, as United weren’t competing in that competition; they just used the new, early transfer window to get a head start on fixing last season’s dismal 15th-place finish.

However, the ripple effect that transfer created unwittingly shaped much of the summer’s spending in the Premier League … not just for United, but for all the top clubs. Here’s how.

The Premier League benchmark

Six high-profile attacking players have moved clubs within the Premier League so far, and they’ve all fallen into roughly the same price bracket: £50m-£60m. But it’s clear that United’s early Cunha deal set the tone on spending between Premier League clubs.

Almost two months passed between United announcing an agreement for Cunha (£62.5m) and Bryan Mbeumo (£66m) signing on the dotted line. In that time, Brighton let João Pedro sign for Chelsea (£55m), West Ham’s Mohammed Kudus joined Tottenham Hotspur (£55m), Nottingham Forest winger Anthony Elanga moved to Newcastle United (£52m) and Chelsea winger Noni Madueke headed to Arsenal (£48m).

Nottingham Forest midfielder Morgan Gibbs-White’s aborted transfer to Tottenham was also priced at £60m before it fell through, as Forest threatened Spurs with legal action over what they considered to be an illegal approach for the player.

It’s an obvious price band and it’s no coincidence that it has formed; after all, a transfer “value” becomes something of a blurry concept when discussions over players start to escalate into the tens of millions. There are so many variables, and each club will point to myriad different factors in order to establish an asking price.

Sometimes, the simplest thing to do is to point to a similar transfer that has already been completed and benchmark against it.

Indeed, to United’s detriment, that’s exactly what Brentford did during protracted negotiations over the signing of Mbeumo, according to ESPN sources: the London club made it clear that they valued the Cameroon international’s transfer higher than that of Cunha, and rejected a number of lower offers before finally agreeing on £66m initial fee, rising to £71m.

At first glance that’s a fair stance to take — Mbeumo (25) is a similar age to Cunha (26) and scored a similar number of Premier League goals (29) across the last two seasons as the Brazilian (27) — but their contractual situations were vastly different: Cunha had a release clause, whereas Mbeumo had just one year to run on his deal (albeit with an option for another.)

There was perhaps more room for nuance in those negotiations, but things clearly got very tense. In the end, the total package of £71m was met by raised eyebrows in most quarters. The overriding feeling was that if United hadn’t paid £62.5m to land Cunha, then a move for Mbeumo would have been significantly cheaper.

The impact on Gyökeres’ fee

In a transfer market full of undisclosed deals, hidden fees and confidential information, Sporting CP president Frederico Varandas was unusually forthright about his desire to get a certain fee for the transfer of star striker Viktor Gyökeres.

“We have been keeping an eye on the market,” Varandas said in June. “I saw two players being sold in the Premier League — Cunha and Mbeumo — forwards who do not have the quality of Viktor, in my opinion. [They] were sold for around €75m [£64m]. We are talking about players who are 26 years old. So, given the demands we make in relation to Viktor’s value, I believe he could leave.”

After weeks of haggling and some bitter recriminations in Portugal, Gyökeres eventually secured a move to Arsenal in a deal worth an initial £54m, plus another £8.5m in add-ons [a total outlay of €73.5m]. Though another factor in the final fee was the fact that Gyökeres’ agents agreed to waive their cut of the initial fee, which saved Sporting €6.4m.

In terms of benchmarking, that put the Sweden international right in that Cunha sweetspot — albeit with a slightly reduced up-front commitment — which may well have annoyed Varandas, but would have felt like good value to Arsenal.

Throughout the eight-month debate over whether the Gunners should spend big to sign Gyökeres, his age (he turned 27 in June) was often cited as a reason not to; especially as he was often being compared to RB Leipzig’s Benjamin Sesko (who is 22). But Varandas’ negotiating task was made fairly simple by United and all he needed to do was point to the similarly aged Cunha as a benchmark and ask for what was effectively established as the going rate.

Meanwhile, Madueke (£48m) joined Arsenal from Chelsea for almost the exact same fee that Jamie Gittens (£48m, with add-ons up to £55m) joined Chelsea from Borussia Dortmund for. The former is three years older, thousands of league minutes wiser and, frankly, a fair bit better than the latter, but the transfer fees agreed would suggest the Blues were simply happy to keep striking deals at the going rate.

The next benchmark: Ekitiké, plus Wirtz

As much as Cunha’s deal set a tone early on, it would be remiss not to mention the part Liverpool’s signing of midfielder Florian Wirtz played in this summer’s transfer business too. Signed from Bayer Leverkusen for an initial £100m, plus another £16m in add-ons, Wirtz’s club-record transfer reminded everyone of the Premier League’s incredible spending power and stretched the top end of the market.

Weeks later, when the Reds negotiated with Eintracht Frankfurt for the signing of striker Hugo Ekitike, his transfer fee was eventually fixed at £69m, rising to £79m — which placed him, not coincidentally, midway between Cunha and Wirtz in terms of costs.

Ekitike had almost moved to Newcastle in 2022 for around £30m, but he has now become a new transfer benchmark after a single decent goal-scoring season (15 goals in 33 games) in the Bundesliga. Now, as a result, Chelsea reportedly value striker Nicolas Jackson’s transfer in the £80m to £100m range, while anyone asking Leipzig for Sesko is receiving a similar answer.

Sesko is 22, Ekitike just turned 23, and Jackson just turned 24. Like Gyökeres, Cunha and Mbeumo, a direct comparison can be made between the players based on position and age, and thus the Ekitike benchmark can be referenced.

This is no new phenomenon — clubs have been benchmarking transfer fees against others for decades — but rarely can you identify the start of the trail so clearly, nor is the deal in question referenced so candidly.