On Tuesday evening, Manchester hosted the PFA Awards’ Ceremony, celebrating the best players in English domestic football from the 2025/26 campaign. Matheus Nunes is not shortlisted for any accolades, but a new statistical model suggests he should walk away from last year with more credit.
The LiveScore app marked the return of Premier League football last week with the introduction of ‘positional rankings.’ It is an analytic tool that uses Opta and Twenty3 data to categorize all players in the division into eight positions, rewarding playing time and over 40 metrics relevant to the particular positions. A LiveScore rating out of 10 reflects each player’s performance level across a season, and the highest performing individuals in their respective roles were then put into a Team of the Season.
Nunes earned a score of 8.8 from the model for his work across the 2025/26 campaign. That rating would be the best for any player in the English topflight, and it also gave him the highest differential from the next best rated player in any given position (1.5 from the 7.3 rating of Jurrien Timber.)
How Nunes navigated a difficult moment
Though many people would argue the Dutchman, who missed the last two months of the season with a groin injury, is a better player, Nunes’ contributions at fullback have been widely acknowledged.
Indeed, the Portuguese player has experienced a positive turnaround after his initial struggles with Manchester City. Signed from Wolves in the summer of 2023, the midfielder was deemed as “one of the best players in the world” by Pep Guardiola the year before while he was playing for Sporting. But the former manager of the Citizens reneged upon that statement not long after his £53 million move, and he only appeared 17 times for the first team in the 2023/24 Premier League campaign.
Eventually, with Kyle Walker out on loan at AC Milan and Rico Lewis not being at an adequate level to be a surefire starter, Nunes earned more minutes as a right back. He would feature in 34 of 38 Premier League fixtures during last season, helping City seal the FA Cup and Carabao Cup titles.
Guardiola has now gone, but Nunes will have the belief that he can continue to help the team under the management of Enzo Maresca. LiveScore certainly suggests that he has something to offer.
