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While the defending Premier League champs navigate the transfer market better than everyone, they're on the verge of signing a player who looks like a future world-class forward and a future what-were-they-thinking entry on a bottom-10 list -- all at the same time.

Hugo Ekitike is everything that dumb clubs get wrong about transfers and everything that smart clubs get right.

Why he's going to fail

In the NBA, they're obsessed with unicorns to the point where it seems like having a horn sticking out of the center of your forehead is a prerequisite entering the draft.

The term was first used in 2016 by superstar Kevin Durant to describe New York Knicks draft pick Kristaps Porzingis.

His new team will need him to start contributing almost right away, and while he did just contribute for Eintracht Frankfurt this past season, it was still only his first real season contributing at a professional level.

In 2024-25, Ekitike scored 14 non-penalty goals and added eight assists in 2,563 league minutes -- good enough for 0.77 goals+assists per 90.

Among players who featured in at least 2,000 Premier League minutes last season, only his future teammate Mohamed Salah and Newcastle's Alexander Isak were more productive.

And of the five, three spent at least part of last season on loan, while the other two have long since departed the clubs that acquired them from Frankfurt.

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Why he's going to flourish

Even as expected goals have infected the internet and even begun to get the occasional not-totally-dismissive mention on mainstream television broadcasts, we're still not close to reaching a point where the concept is understood properly, let alone employed in any strategic fashion.

Expected goals remains the most powerful predictive metric that we have, both at a team and individual level.

So if you were trying to predict which two Premier League players would experience the biggest drop-off in goals this season, you would put Mbeumo and Cunha right at the top of the list -- and United have built their summer, and their short-term success, around acquiring both of them.

At the other end of the spectrum, Ekitike scored 14 non-penalty goals from 19.3 expected goals, the biggest underperformance of any player across Europe's Big Five leagues:

And so, let's flip this around: If you were trying to predict which player in Europe was going to experience the biggest increase in goal scoring this season, Ektike would be at the top of the list.

Only Salah and Isak were more productive per-minute than Ekitike this season -- and he, really, was even better than that.

If we add his expected goals and expected goals assisted numbers together, Ekitike averaged 0.91 xG+xAG per 90 last season.
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