Manchester United, per the Daily Mail, are edging closer to a deal for Chelsea's Andrey Santos, with talks reported to be progressing on a switch to Old Trafford for the 22-year-old. That is the news, but the underlying question is more interesting: what exactly would United be buying? Santos is a Brazil international central midfielder, valued at around €45.5m, who has spent the past three seasons trying to convert loan-spell promise into a fixed place in a crowded Chelsea engine room. At 22, with a domestic move now credibly on the table, this is the moment his profile warrants close reading. He is old enough to be judged on evidence, young enough that the next step defines whether he becomes a rotation option or something more.
The profile in numbers
The pizza wheel measured against 67 central and defensive midfielders in his league frames the case cleanly, and it is a defensive engine before anything else: Santos ranks in the 100th percentile for interceptions — reading and cutting out opponents' passes — at 3.3 per 90, and pairs that with the 97th percentile for aerials won (3.3 per 90) and the 87th for duels won (6.61). That physical, ball-winning core is genuinely rare, echoed by his positional-peer standing of the 95th percentile for physicality and aggression. The passing profile is more of a metronome than a creator's: 90th percentile for passes (66.06 per 90), pass accuracy (91.25 percent, the share he completes) and touches (61.93), but only the 63rd percentile for key passes — the passes that create a shot — at 0.83 in the league, and the 76th for tackles. Most intriguing is xG: he sits in the 99th percentile at 0.11 per 90, the quality of chances he gets from midfield outstripping almost all his peers. Across his last 14 games he averages 6.46, the trend pointing down, with just two goal involvements and a mixed WLWLDW run of results.
Role and positioning
Across his last 30 appearances, Andrey Santos has been deployed almost entirely as a deep-lying midfielder, starting 60% of the time at right defensive midfield and another 23.3% on the left of that same defensive line. The remaining slivers are scattered — 6.7% in central midfield, and 3.3% apiece at central attacking midfield, right midfield and right centre midfield. The picture is unambiguous: this is a base-of-midfield operator rather than a positional chameleon, with roughly 83% of his minutes anchored in a defensive-midfield berth split across both sides. The occasional cameo further forward or out wide reads as system tweak rather than genuine role change. The lateral shift between right and left defensive midfield suggests he is trusted to screen either flank, likely within a double pivot where the two holders rotate coverage. It is the profile of a player whose nominal "Central Midfield" label undersells how deep he actually sits — his habitual station is a step behind that, protecting the space in front of the back line.
The trajectory
Santos is a midfielder who lives in deep and defensive-midfield territory, so the fairer lens is match rating, availability and the volume he handles rather than raw output. His 2023/2024 came in a small sample — 12 apps, 843 minutes — where a 7.21 average rating carried the usual caveat that comes with limited exposure. The breakout was 2024/2025: 32 apps, 2,857 minutes, a 7.57 rating and heavy involvement at 66.15 touches per 90, alongside 3.47 tackles and 1.01 interceptions. That was also his peak for direct output, with 10 goals and three assists at 0.32 goals per 90. In 2025/2026 the goals fell to three (0.11 per 90), but reading this as a decline would miss the picture: he played more games (43), his assists rose to four (0.15 per 90), his touches climbed to a career-high 79.35 per 90, and interceptions ticked up to 1.16. The 7.01 rating sits below the previous year but still comfortable, and his tackles (3.03) and key passes (0.78) held. This is an output shift toward a more involved, ball-progressing role, not a step back.
Standout displays
Santos's best recent evidence comes in cup football for Chelsea. His clearest display was an 8.4 away to Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Carabao Cup, a full 90 minutes with a goal and an assist — the sort of direct return that hints at a higher ceiling than his 2025/2026 numbers of three goals and four assists across 43 appearances suggest. He backed it up with an 8.0 at home to Port Vale in the FA Cup, another 90 minutes and another goal, then a 7.8 away to Hull City in the same competition without a goal contribution but a steady presence. All three are club performances, not international ones, and all three lean on the goalscoring midfield threat that briefly bloomed in 2024/2025. Whether that end product travels back into league football is the open question these standout showings only partly answer.
The verdict
The honest read on Andrey Santos is that his value lives in the physical and territorial side of midfield, not the scoresheet. The interception rate that ranks him top of his positional pool, the 95th-percentile physicality and aggression, and the 93rd-percentile ball retention paint a box-to-box midfielder who wins his duels, reads passing lanes and keeps possession ticking — a controller with genuine bite rather than a pure creator. His seven goal involvements across 43 appearances this season give him a useful end-product, but that is a bonus on top of the real skill set. The ceiling is a two-way midfielder in a side that lets him cover ground and dominate second balls; a heavily positional, low-transition system would waste him. The caveats deserve weight: consistency has wobbled, his rating has dipped, and much of his output arrives in lower-tier fixtures. Judge him as an engine, not a finisher, and the profile is a compelling one.
