Why Manchester City Think Matheus Nunes Is One Of The Best Midfielders In The World
Man City's final signing of the transfer window is Wolves Matheus Nunes; a player Pep Guardiola once described as one of the best midfielders in the world. But while his time in the midlands was spent playing in a system entirely at odds with City's, this might be a deal that makes a crazy kind of sense.
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hi there everybody, yeah it's me again,
00:06 Adam Cleary from 442, and Mateus Nunes.
00:08 He's gone to Man City, probably by the time
00:11 you watch this video.
00:12 He'll have had all his little photos with his shirt,
00:15 he'll be the latest member of Pep Guardiola's
00:17 footballing freak show.
00:19 Now on the one hand, Pep has called him
00:20 one of the best midfielders in the entire world,
00:22 and he probably is, but nonetheless,
00:24 he's still a bit of a weird fit for Manchester City,
00:27 'cause he tends to be better in deep barriers
00:30 and winning the ball, not the kind of player
00:31 you would automatically assume would fit that side well.
00:34 But, as I will now attempt to ably demonstrate,
00:37 it's the fact that he's not a perfect fit
00:39 for Manchester City, which probably makes him
00:41 a perfect fit for Manchester City.
00:43 And you're right, no, that doesn't make sense.
00:45 (bell dings)
00:47 Now just really quickly, before we begin,
00:49 very happy to say that we've actually got a sponsor
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01:00 All right, so Mateus Nunes, who is he, what does he do?
01:03 He's probably one of, if not the, most attacking
01:06 and adventurous number sixes in world football.
01:09 And that is to say that the role he's played for Wolves
01:11 is sitting in either a double pivot or as part of a three,
01:15 and he looks to win the ball back in his own defensive third
01:18 and then he drives up the pitch with it,
01:20 leaving idiots in his way.
01:22 And it's very easy to illustrate that,
01:23 looking at his FB ref profile,
01:25 I can see he's excellent at winning the ball back,
01:26 primarily in his defensive third.
01:28 And then he just carries and carries and carries.
01:32 He takes on players, he goes past them,
01:34 he progresses the ball up the pitch through running,
01:37 better than almost anybody.
01:39 And even just this season,
01:40 you've already seen that when Wolves played Man United.
01:42 He was winning the ball back loads,
01:43 he was driving them up the pitch,
01:45 really exploiting Man United's high line.
01:48 He looked in that game fantastic.
01:49 But the problem with this,
01:50 and indeed where most of the questions
01:52 over his suitability have come from,
01:54 are from the fact that Man City very rarely find themselves
01:57 in those Wolves-like situations.
01:59 Teams sit very deep against them,
02:01 there is not room to drive into.
02:03 When Man City get their little box midfield going,
02:05 which I'll just demonstrate here,
02:06 what they want from the two sitting players
02:08 is ball retention and passing it round
02:10 and making sure they can outmanoeuvre the opponents.
02:12 And what they want from the two attacking players
02:14 is the ability to find passes in tight spaces,
02:17 drive into the box, score goals and assists.
02:19 Score assists?
02:20 You don't score, you get assists, don't you?
02:22 You don't score them.
02:24 Anyway, and again, just looking at Nunes' FB ref profile,
02:26 that's not really his game.
02:28 Like he's not one of the great passers of the ball,
02:30 he certainly doesn't do it with particular accuracy
02:32 or length or incision or anything like that.
02:34 And in terms of his work in the final third,
02:36 he doesn't really get the ball into the box very well.
02:38 If we look at his goal and shot creation,
02:40 he doesn't really do any of it
02:42 unless he's just taken a player on
02:44 when he's burst into the space
02:45 and is able to create one that way.
02:47 Again, not a situation Man City
02:49 find themselves in particularly often.
02:50 So from what we've seen of his time at Wolves,
02:52 he's not a particularly good fit here
02:54 and he's not a particularly good fit here.
02:56 So why has an injury to Kevin De Bruyne,
02:59 undoubtedly their most creative player,
03:01 sparked this transfer?
03:02 Well, and this is gonna sound weird,
03:05 the reason is Phil Foden.
03:07 Now I'm like you, I saw the injury to De Bruyne
03:09 and thought, oh, do you know what?
03:10 This might finally be Foden's chance to cement himself
03:13 as one of the sort of elite,
03:15 central creative playmakers in world football.
03:17 This could finally be the making of him.
03:20 And as the season goes on, it may well be,
03:22 but in the short term, certainly during De Bruyne's injury,
03:25 Pep Guardiola does not seem to trust Phil Foden
03:28 to play in this position.
03:30 Whether they go back to the box midfield
03:31 and he ends up playing it there
03:32 or they stick to the 4-2-3-1,
03:34 he's not gonna be the central focus of their creativity.
03:38 And if you watched Man City versus Newcastle,
03:39 that might sound stupid, like the guy who ran the show,
03:42 he was playing in this area,
03:43 he was pretty much responsible for everything good
03:46 that Man City did.
03:47 But in order for that to happen,
03:49 Pep had to pretty much set the whole team up around him.
03:52 If you go back and watch that game,
03:53 and apologies to Newcastle fans,
03:55 I've got a setup in red here just so you can see it.
03:57 Hello, on that camera,
03:59 it doesn't really show up if I use the other white markers.
04:01 Anyway, Foden was playing on the right-hand side,
04:03 but he was doing all his work in this area of the pitch.
04:06 But the way Man City engineered that
04:08 was primarily through Kyle Walker.
04:10 He was back to his line-bombing best.
04:12 They weren't trying to use the box midfield,
04:14 they weren't trying to overload that way.
04:15 What was happening was Walker was running
04:18 all the way down that side of the pitch
04:20 and allowing Foden to sort of come into here
04:23 to be sort of a double 10 with Alvarez.
04:25 Now, by doing that, it stopped Dan Byrne
04:28 from following him into the centre of the pitch.
04:29 He had to stay out there to keep an eye on Walker.
04:32 And that then presented Bruno Guimaraes
04:34 with sort of two players to look after.
04:36 Again, part of the reason why he didn't seem
04:38 to have a particularly effective game.
04:39 So you can see by doing this, they've got their box,
04:41 they've got their numerical advantage
04:42 by having Foden come across from that side
04:44 and Walker go up there.
04:45 Now, while that was all well and good in that game
04:47 and it got them the win, Pep is not gonna wanna do that
04:49 across the course of the season
04:50 because you can see the huge hole
04:52 Walker making those runs leaves.
04:54 When they do this the normal way,
04:55 when John Stones is in the side,
04:57 when they lose the ball, it's very easy for him
04:59 just to move back from the midfield into the defence
05:01 and they get their shape back pretty much straight away.
05:03 If you're trying to do that with Kyle Walker,
05:05 he's got a long way to come to get back into position
05:08 and that will allow other teams to exploit
05:10 that transitional moment, if you will.
05:12 So for that reason, Pep does not necessarily see Foden
05:15 as the direct answer to fill the Kevin De Bruyne hole.
05:18 As I say, that might change as the season goes on.
05:20 He might prove that he can have the responsibility
05:22 to play there and do all the other jobs,
05:24 but right now that's not what he wants
05:26 and that's why they're going to get Nunes.
05:28 (static)
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07:02 as Sergio Busquets with the ball in his own half.
07:05 Now, back to the video.
07:06 Now, at the minute, with John Stones injured,
07:09 Man City are playing this four, two, three, one.
07:12 If you wanna get Nunes into that,
07:13 you have to drop Kovacic,
07:15 which he probably isn't going to do.
07:17 He's not spectacular, he's certainly not going to one,
07:19 but he's doing a very good job in that role.
07:21 But when Stones comes back into the side,
07:23 it's more than likely they're gonna go back
07:24 to their three, box three,
07:26 and that means you're gonna end up having Nunes here.
07:29 And this is why you get all these questions
07:30 about him not being a particularly good fit
07:32 'cause he's never really played that high up,
07:34 either for sporting or for Wolves or for Portugal.
07:37 It's an eight, yes, but you're still pretty much playing
07:39 as a 10 'cause you remember from last season
07:41 when they play this system,
07:42 what they do with the wide players,
07:43 they hold their width,
07:44 that stretches the defence out nicely,
07:46 and that allows these two eights to push up
07:48 alongside Haaland in sort of the half spaces
07:51 that that's left.
07:52 And that, going purely off his numbers
07:53 and looking at what he's done for Wolves,
07:55 is a really bad fit for Nunes.
07:56 Doesn't like being in those areas of the pitch.
07:58 As you saw from his numbers, he doesn't create much.
08:01 He doesn't really do much in that area.
08:02 He wants to receive the ball deep
08:04 and drive into space with it.
08:06 This is why I think it's actually quite a clever transfer
08:10 because what Pep's done is he's looked
08:12 at the profile of the player.
08:13 He's looked at his skillset,
08:14 away from the numbers and the statistics
08:16 and what he's actually done on a football pitch,
08:18 and just thought, "Can I take this skillset
08:21 "and repurpose it for what we need?"
08:24 And I mean, it's a gamble, certainly.
08:25 You can see why they were after someone
08:26 like Lucas Paqueta first and foremost,
08:28 but I think what Pep wants here is to say,
08:30 "Look, I want you to do exactly what you were doing
08:32 "for Wolves from a deep position
08:34 "and do it for us high up the pitch."
08:36 If you look at what Ilkay Gundogan was doing
08:38 in this position last season,
08:39 it was very different to what De Bruyne was doing
08:42 on the other side.
08:43 De Bruyne was there to find the last pass,
08:45 to get that little ounce of space
08:46 to make things happen in the final third.
08:49 And Gundogan was a recipient of that.
08:51 He benefited from it massively.
08:52 But primarily, Gundogan was there to add energy,
08:55 to add a counter-pressing threat,
08:56 to do all the really hard work,
08:58 a lot of the running in this area
09:00 that would allow players like Haaland and De Bruyne
09:02 and Grealish and Silva
09:04 to kind of do their positional job instead.
09:06 And while Nunes has never done this,
09:08 if you look at the stuff he's actually good at,
09:09 which is he's really high energy,
09:11 he's really good at winning the ball back,
09:13 he's good at breaking past players to arrive into areas,
09:16 that does fit that job pretty well.
09:19 His defensive stats are really good,
09:20 but he's not a tough tackler.
09:22 He's not a really big, bruising unit
09:24 that bullies players off the ball.
09:25 He just reads the game incredibly well,
09:28 cuts out passing lanes, makes interceptions,
09:30 and that's just as valuable here as it is here.
09:33 His work rate's absolutely exceptional.
09:34 He's got a great engine on him.
09:36 And as we saw from his take-ons,
09:37 he is capable of going past an opponent.
09:40 Now again, that's just as valuable to do to a defender
09:43 as it is to do to a midfielder.
09:44 And the thing is, while his passing stats
09:46 might look like a bit of a concern
09:47 if you're a Man City fan, you've got to remember,
09:49 and I say this with the greatest of respect to Wolves,
09:51 he was playing for Wolves.
09:53 They had a really tough season last year.
09:54 They were not controlling games.
09:56 There was no requirement on anybody in that team
09:58 to be stringing around 50 or 100 passes
10:01 across the course of a match.
10:02 But he is technically good enough to do that.
10:06 Now obviously, having no De Bruyne
10:07 is just having no De Bruyne.
10:09 There's no way you can paper that over
10:10 with another transfer.
10:11 So I think it's very likely we'll actually see
10:13 Bernardo Silva playing this role
10:15 when they do get back to this system.
10:16 He obviously likes Edson Alvarez
10:18 because of the goal threat he offers
10:19 and how direct he can be,
10:21 but City are gonna need, against the teams
10:23 that will rigidly try and defend against them,
10:25 someone who can make a bit of magic,
10:27 who can jink round a player, who can do stuff like that.
10:30 And while Nunes is capable,
10:32 Silva feels like the closest replacement they've got.
10:35 And again, this sucks for Foden,
10:36 but you would imagine if they do get back to the system,
10:39 probably Jeremy Doku,
10:40 who's gonna be on the right-hand side.
10:42 Because while I think Foden's much better as a player
10:45 and can do way more with the ball,
10:47 Doku is way better in that role,
10:48 holding his width, staying out that side,
10:50 stretching the defense,
10:51 and allowing these two players to get into the space.
10:54 Foden, because he's obviously supposed to be a number 10,
10:57 wants to drift inside and wants to do most of his game there.
11:01 And that's, there ain't no room.
11:02 But I mean, all that being said,
11:04 it's a long old season, isn't it?
11:05 Manchester City are gonna have a huge fixture pile up
11:08 over the next nine months.
11:09 I mean, obviously, except for the Carabao Cup,
11:12 when you castle knock them out in the third round
11:13 in a couple of weeks' time,
11:14 how are the lads, et cetera.
11:16 So there'll still be plenty of opportunities for Foden.
11:18 He'll still get a chance to prove himself.
11:19 He probably will end up playing in this position
11:22 at some point because they're going to need him to.
11:23 And I hope genuinely that he really does prove
11:26 that this transfer is not necessary.
11:29 But Pep Guardiola, he trains with these players.
11:32 He sees them a lot more than I do.
11:34 He is convinced that they need another body,
11:36 someone who can do this job in this sort of 8/10 area.
11:40 And while Nunes doesn't seem like the most obvious player
11:43 to come in and do it,
11:44 just purely looking at his skillset
11:46 and the things he can do,
11:47 Pep obviously thinks that that's workable.
11:49 And I'll tell you what, as a man who plays Warhammer 40,000,
11:52 I think it's really good for a man Guardiola's age
11:55 to have a little project, something he can work on.
11:57 Basically, if Pep Guardiola can do as good a conversion job
12:00 with Nunes as I've done with this Space Marine Librarian,
12:03 ho ho, look at that.
12:05 This is a frankly incredible transfer for Man City.
12:08 You all should be excited.
12:09 So yes, barring him failing a medical
12:11 or being found to have placed a lot of bets
12:13 that he shouldn't, Nunes will be a Man City player.
12:15 And I think that's how they'll use him.
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