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Manchester City star Matheus Nunes is going from strength to strength after more than a year of struggling after his Wolves move.
To Belgrade in December 2023, where Manchester City played out a dead rubber of a Champions League game with an intriguing side.
Micah Hamilton scored a belter on debut to signal his potential on his way to earning a move to Middlesbrough in deal worth up to £5m. His career hasn't really taken off from there, with a solitary appearance in the League Cup all he has to show for this season.
The game was run by Oscar Bobb, a talent who has made considerably more inroads to the City squad. A month later he would score a sensational winner at Newcastle to help City on their way towards a fourth consecutive league title, and he is still in Pep Guardiola's squad today.
Scoring his first goal in City colours was Kalvin Phillips, who had fought to stay at the club after a disastrous first season but failed to look any better. The midfielder looked a bit sheepish after scoring a penalty in the 3-2 win, and it was obvious he would not be important to City going forward.
Another star failing to take another opportunity was Matheus Nunes, who had not started in the Premier League at that point for over two months after suffering such a hostile reception at former club Wolves that he was hooked at half-time for his own good.
The end-result of a muddled transfer window that had seen City go for Declan Rice and Lucas Paqueta first before pulling out for different reasons saw them plump for Nunes, who then endured a difficult start.
It took much longer for Nunes to look remotely comfortable in a City shirt. When Rodri was injured last season Nunes spoke up about playing in that position instead but he was never really trusted in it.
This time last year he was showing potential as a left-winger - not ideal given he arrived as a midfielder and a potential improvement on Phillips but something at least. As hard as it is to believe, it is less than 12 months since he was first tried as a full-back by Guardiola and his outing at left-back in the Manchester derby went well for the first 86 minutes and then disastrously from there.
After everyone had some time to cool off and think about what they had done, Nunes returned in January 2025 as a right-back. He offered City a physicality and energy that had been lost elsewhere in the team and was largely very good in plenty of games, but too often there would be silly errors that would prove costly and blight those performances.
Even a glorious late winner at home to Aston Villa in a game of serious importance wasn't enough to cast aside the defensive doubts, and fans wanted to know at the end of the summer transfer window why City hadn't signed a right-back. Even this season, it was only when Abdukodir Khusanov stepped into the role for the Manchester derby that the City defence began to look solid.
When Khusanov suffered an unfortunate injury in the first half at Arsenal in late September, Nunes stepped back in and hasn't looked back since. His start against Liverpool was his ninth in the last 11 City games, coming off the bench in Monaco and sitting out the League Cup win at Swansea.
Guardiola breezed recently that Nunes can be one of the best full-backs around if he continues to improve, yet the 27-year-old deserves immense credit for getting as far as he has. Nobody who watched in Belgrade or even less than a year ago could have expected that Nunes would get as far as he had.
Even more promising for him and for Guardiola, it looks like there is even more to come.
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