There appears to be a new dribble king at Wolves, with a graphic showcasing Matheus Cunha to be one of the best in the Premier League.
Wanderers landed Cunha in January from Atletico Madrid, in the hope of him improving the team in the final third.
So far, he’s only scored two goals. But for a while he wasn’t really playing the position he knows best and is most effective in.
In some games he was asked to lead the line and it just didn’t suit him.
Just lately though, he’s been operating just off Diego Costa and he’s looked far better.
Something that’s becoming quite common is Cunha picking up the ball in midfield positions and then carrying it forward and into the final third.
And his dribbling ability is actually quite underrated.
A graphic has been shared on Twitter (by user @TheDevilsDNA) that has used fbref data to assess the dribbling of Premier League players, barring centre-backs.
It is a scatter graph that shows the dribble success and the dribbles attempted per 50 live touches.
Cunha’s position on the graph is very interesting.
He’s up at the 65% mark for dribble success rate, and sits at around five dribbles per 50 live touches.
From this chart, it can be determined that Cunha is not only a frequent dribbler, but he beats his man fairly regularly.
Essentially, the further a player is to the top right-hand corner of the graph, the more of an elite dribbler they are. And Cunha is quite far over.
A few other players from Wolves can be seen.
Adama Traore is unsurprisingly there. Only Alan Saint-Maximin of Newcastle makes more dribble attempts per 50 live touches than him.
But Traore is much lower down on the success rate than Cunha at around 45%.
During his time at Wolves, Traore has often posted incredible dribbling statistics. But it would appear there could now be a new dribble king in town.
Matheus Cunha is Wolves’ new dribble king
Watching him recently, it has certainly felt like Cunha has been picking the ball up a lot more and running with it.
That success rate is very impressive.
He is clearly someone that opposition players find quite difficult to stop.
The Brazilian is tall, powerful and quick. Perhaps a reason why he is more successful than Traore is because Cunha has better technical quality. He’s got better feet than the Spaniard, and mixes it up more.
And to be fair to Traore, opposition defenders know what he’s like and often they’ll just foul him.