The point here is more that while he's 90th percentile for goals this season, he's actually usually around 60-70th percentile and his xG highlights that. If we were signing an attacking midfielder with a goal variance of 15+/-5 then £60m is fine, because that goal output is pretty elite. The problem is Cunha is not that player. He's a (generously) 10+/-5 type player. I promise I’m not deliberately ignoring, I’m trying to get you to articulate exactly what you’re looking for. Which I genuinely appreciate you doing. They didn’t all have clear upward trajectory. Cunha went from failing at Atletico to Wolves. Kluivert had an ok 17/18 season at Ajax, but flopped at Roma where he had many loans. Gordon already performed well at Everton in his debut season
This is what I mean about looking beyond headline figures to actual underlying data. Cunha "flopped" at Atletico because he was playing as a striker under Simeone when they also had Suarez, Correa, Felix and Griezmann. Atletico were short on cash after bombing out of the CL group early, the Portuguese language contingent was causing trouble for Simeone about their game time and you find a situation where suddenly selling him looks very attractive. For a club looking for someone to play as a 10 rather than as a genuine forward in a pair (where there's significantly less goal output expected of him), that's ripe pickings for a decent deal.
This is just a very basic illustration of the point, but does this look like a player who doesn't have a baseline level of quality? It's an absolutely typical display of maintaining a consistent baseline despite stepping up responsibility. He has a dip at Atletico because of circumstance, but he's not suddenly a bad player.
Likewise, Kluivert
That doesn't take a statistician to figure out what is going on there. There's a reason they ended up at clubs with decent data anlytics.
I don't think Newcastle/Spurs etc. escape that tax anymore. Branthwaite is a different proposition to Gordon, who they clearly think has a much, much higher ceiling. This is one of the dangers of buying players in their very early 20's, I suspect you'll either be able to get Branthwaite for £40m in a year or he'll cost £80m, but the saving for waiting is pretty minimal and you're not losing out on a couple of the players best years. I'm pretty confident if United wanted Gordon for £40m uncontested like Newcastle did we would have gotten him.
I'd say Cunha is worth what Wolves paid for him. I know that is controversial, because he's had 2 and a half good years there so surely his price should have gone up? Well actually I'd argue no, there's 3 aspects to it.
1) I don't think he's got potential to go any higher, what you see is what you get (and there's a reason Atletico bought him, they saw that, they just used him badly/had bad squad management).
2) Premier League "proven" is really, really over-rated. What he really is is Wolves proven, I have doubts he'll be able to translate his ability better here than he did there, which circles back to point 1. That's not to say he'll be bad at United, or even he'll be worse.
3) Cunha is 26 in a few weeks. Players in those dynamic attacking positions typically have their best years in a range around 23-28 and then have to adapt or fall off. So realistically we're only getting half of that time for £60m, rather than all of it for less. He's also entering a period of ever increasing risk for injury niggles which would be a real issue for us and him.
So what you're getting really is a player on higher wages, with less of his best years left, putting in similar performances with an increased risk he wont be available. In exchange for some kind of guarantee that he'll adapt reasonably well to the move and hit uthe ground running? It's Mason Mount all over again (and I don't include Mount's hilariously sad injury record in that assessment, which even by United standards is a bit unlucky).
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