Arsenal in the Mud..ryk

Arsenal avoid making a stupid mistake because another club made an even bigger mistake

You have all probably seen the news that Chelsea have successfully hijacked the signing of Mykhailo Mudryk.

They ended up going to a valuation that Arsenal were unwilling to match. The reporting I have seen suggests that it was 10 million euros more guaranteed, a contract that is worth about 10-15 million euros more for Mudryk, and then easier to achieve add-on bonuses that are probably worth an additional 5-7 million euros over what Arsenal were willing to do. So all in they beat Arsenal by 25-35 million (if you see someone saying it was only a few million I think they are wrong or not giving the full truth).

It is disappointing for sure.

If you spend any time watching videos on him will leave you thinking that this young man has buckets of talent and the potential to really turn into a top-tier player. He has elite top-end speed, is quick over short distances, and seems to strike the ball really well. It was fun to imagine how he could fit with Arsenal and blossom.

The hard part but perhaps the more important part, I think if you’re honest is also recognizing that this was a move where there was a lot of unknowns and uncertainty. I think that is the case with any signing but was especially true here.

Mudryk has a tremendous ceiling, he also has a track record that is just 3,288 minutes long, with 2,590 minutes of that coming in the Ukrainian Premier League and just 698 coming in the Champions League. He had never played more than 1,000 minutes in a season until where he played 1,426 minutes in the first half of the year.

To say he is raw, even for a young player is an understatement. If he had came to Arsenal he would have been older than both Bukayo Saka (11,570 senior minutes) and Gabriel Martinelli (6,482 senior minutes). It is possible he ends up better than both but he certainly hasn’t put up the same track record of earning time as a young player at the same speed as current Arsenal wide attackers.

This is also not discounting that the majority of his time has come in let’s be honest again, a not-good league. It is with an understandable reason, Ukraine is dealing with an invasion from Russia, they have seen most foreign players leave but that has really hurt the overall quality of the league. They are ranked 16th by Uefa but are in reality probably even lower than that, and they are also a league that skews towards the two big teams.

It felt like as this deal advanced he went from an exciting but raw prospect to people talking themselves into how big of an impact he will be. I will readily admit that it could be quite big, but I also believe that this is a player with pretty symmetrical outcomes probability. I believe that they average outcome is top 6 level rotation player (around 2,000 minutes a season with roughly 0.4-0.5 Goals plus assists) but pretty big and flat curves on both sides. The best case is maybe top 5 winger type, the worst case is he washes out and ends up at a Championship level club.