Mateus Fernandes: £80m Target for Manchester United and Liverpool's Catastrophic Loan

Manchester United and Liverpool went shopping in the same market last summer. They walked out with very different receipts.

A sweeping analysis from The Athletic has ranked all 189 Premier League signings from last season. It makes encouraging reading for United. For Liverpool, it is brutal.

United’s new era of competence

All four of United’s major additions landed inside the top 40 – a stark contrast to the chaos that has defined too many of their recent windows.

• Matheus Cunha came in at 40th
• Bryan Mbeumo at 38th
• Benjamin Sesko at 29th
• Senne Lammens an eye-catching ninth

Each of them, in different ways, gave Old Trafford something it has lacked: clarity, energy, and consistency.

Cunha’s work rate and movement knitted attacks together. Mbeumo added direct running and end product from wide areas. Sesko, still raw, offered a genuine penalty-box threat. Lammens, ranked inside the top 10, stabilised a position that had become a weekly drama. For once, United’s recruitment didn’t just look good on paper; it translated on the pitch.

And yet, the name now dominating their planning for this summer didn’t even arrive in Manchester. Not yet.

Mateus Fernandes: the £80m light in West Ham’s relegation gloom

Eighth on the list sits Mateus Fernandes, the Portugal international who joined West Ham from Southampton for £40m and promptly became the heartbeat of a sinking side.

While the Hammers slid into the Championship, Fernandes rose. He took on the creative load after Lucas Paqueta’s January exit and refused to shrink with the responsibility.

The Athletic’s verdict captured the breadth of his influence: tackles, duels, recoveries, long-range strikes, incisive passing. He did the dirty work and the pretty stuff, often in the same move. In a team unravelling around him, he looked like he belonged a level above.

It’s why, just a year after West Ham pushed the boat out to sign him, he now looks destined to leave. Relegation has shredded their bargaining power, but not their valuation. TEAMtalk report that West Ham want around £80m for the 23-year-old, a fee that reflects his impact and his upside.

United are seriously considering paying it.

There is a neat narrative thread here too: Fernandes idolises Bruno Fernandes, the current United captain. By all accounts, personal terms would be a formality. The midfielder wants the move. The question is whether United decide he is the centrepiece they build around – and how far West Ham are prepared to climb down from that £80m stance once the negotiating starts.

Liverpool’s record deals under the microscope

While United’s business draws praise, Liverpool’s record-breaking outlay has been judged far more harshly.

The club smashed their transfer record twice – £116m for Florian Wirtz, then £125m for Alexander Isak. On this season’s evidence, the return has been underwhelming.

• Wirtz scraped into the top 100 at 97th
• Isak, ravaged by injuries and unable to find rhythm, slumped to 172nd out of 189
• Milos Kerkez emerged as Liverpool’s best piece of business at 49th
• Hugo Ekitike just behind at 50th
• Giorgi Mamardashvili was ranked 73rd
• Freddie Woodman 89th
• Jeremie Frimpong’s campaign never really caught fire, leaving him down in 119th
• Giovanni Leoni, cruelly struck by an ACL tear on his debut, came in at 143rd

These are not disastrous numbers across the board, but they hardly match the scale of Liverpool’s ambition or spending.

And then comes the real sting.

Harvey Elliott’s Villa nightmare

Propping up the entire list, in 189th place, is a Liverpool deal described as “catastrophic”: Harvey Elliott’s loan to Aston Villa.

The language from The Athletic is unforgiving. Elliott, they argued, was to Villa what an appendix is to the human body – present, but ultimately unnecessary. Unai Emery’s side surged through an excellent season, yet the 23-year-old attacking midfielder barely featured in the story.

He made just three league starts. Emery clearly did not see him as integral, and attempts to salvage the situation only made things worse. Efforts in January to cut the loan short failed. So did February talks to remove an obligation-to-buy clause, which was set to trigger after 10 appearances. Elliott reached nine by March, then effectively became untouchable, even when injuries bit.

It was, as the report put it, shambolic – for Villa, for Liverpool, and for a player whose talent is not in doubt but whose season has been written off as a waste.

For a club that prides itself on smart, surgical squad-building, to own both record signings and the campaign’s worst-rated deal is a jarring contradiction.

Xhaka tops the list as Sunderland rewrite the script

At the opposite end of the table, top spot went to Granit Xhaka. The former Arsenal midfielder has reinvented himself before, but his impact at Sunderland still borders on the remarkable.

His arrival underpinned a season that ended with Sunderland qualifying for the Europa League in their first year back in the Premier League. Leadership, control, and a snarling competitive edge – Xhaka brought all of it to a club that has spent years clawing its way out of the shadows.

His ranking is a reminder that the best signings are not always the flashiest, and that the right personality in the right dressing room can change the direction of a club.

A window that shapes the next chapter

Strip away the numbers and the message is clear. United, long mocked for their scattergun approach, finally look like a club edging towards a coherent recruitment strategy. Liverpool, usually the model of joined-up thinking, have misfired in key areas and now face awkward questions about value and fit.

In the middle of it all stands Mateus Fernandes: £40m bargain turned £80m prize, a relegated star courted by one of the game’s giants.

If United decide he is worth the leap, and if West Ham bow to the realities of the drop, this summer could hinge on one midfielder’s next move.