Chelsea's £85m boost to Arsenal's title hopes

Looking back on January, it's clear things worked out for the Gunners

The 14th of January was a particularly despair-filled day on Arsenal Twitter. That’s the day, of course, that Ukraine’s answer to Neymar, Mykhaylo Mudryk, opted to join hated Chelsea FC instead of Arsenal, and boy did the decision create some rancor in the Gunners support base.

“Mudryk going to chelsea must lead to the entire transfer dept being thrown out physically by bouncers,” wrote one Arsenal fan. “Edu must be packed in a box and sent to brazil.”

“Half way through the window and no alternatives. It’s absolutely piss poor,” wrote another.

This isn’t to say a few tweets represent the fan base as a whole, but there was certainly some angst out there, even among more reasonable fans.

Mudryk, Edu, Boehly, and the art of saying "no"

Folks like Scott and I, however, stayed true to our thinking that Mudryk may have a bright future, but wouldn’t be particularly valuable in a world where Arsenal needed quality to compete for a title in the coming months. And those who took a more bearish slant on the winger took some heat for their stance.

Two weeks or so later, and the club had moved on to Leandro Trossard. When we posted our breakdowns of the Belgian, we got pretty mixed feedback as to whether he’d be a good signing, with some concerned about his age, attitude leading to a divorce with Brighton or what they considered a pretty low ceiling.

But flash forward about six weeks, and it’s likely that 90% or more of Gooners would choose Leo over the guy we missed on.

Instant impact here, struggles there

This past weekend is a perfect microcosm of why Leandro Trossard was a much better signing for a team in need of depth amid a title charge. Trossard at one point wasn’t even supposed to be in the squad, but by Sunday evening he was holding a player of the match trophy.

Mudryk, meanwhile, avoided a “007” start to his Chelsea career (0 goals, 0 assists in 7 games) by heading the ball toward goal for what became a Mateo Kovačić goal. But he also turned in a wretched performance beside that, going 0/2 on dribbles, completing just 14 of his 21 pass attempts (none were long balls) and turning the ball over on nearly half his touches (17 times losing possession in 39 touches per SofaScore, which counts fouls and errant passes as turnovers, as well as standard tackles, etc.).

This was no anomaly for Mudryk in his time at Chelsea. The 22-year-old, although in just 263 minutes, has been rated a 6.26 so far by WhoScored, a very poor rating for that site. His dribble success rate coming into the weekend was just 18%, and he was top-10 among Premier League attackers for unsuccessful touches to date.

Mudryk has so far completed 2 dribbles (15 attempts) and struck four passes that helped create shots in about three full games of action. Neither of those numbers is good.

Meanwhile, Trossard has played more league minutes, but he’s done much better. He’s got three single games with as many dribbles as Mudryk has all season. And while he’s only got 9 shot-creating live passes in his ~4 full games of minutes, three of them were goal-creating actions.

At this point, Leo has emerged as a useful enough player to take minutes off Gabriel Martinelli and pressure off Gabriel Jesus’s return from injury. He scored against Brentford and assisted the winning goal at Leicester before this past weekend’s hat trick of assists. And he very much looks the part of an Arsenal/Mikel Arteta attacker, combining positional fluidity, world-class close control, chance creation and an eye for a shot.

That all shows in his chart below.

This kind of ball retention, passing and shooting is huge for Arsenal, without even getting into the positional versatility and fluidity.

Listen, there are still three years left on Trossard’s deal after this season, and as he surpasses 30 we could certainly find ourselves wondering whether the club would be better off with a 24-year-old Mudryk, who would then be in year three or four of his billion-year contract. But in terms of Arsenal’s odds at the title this season, it’s painfully obvious which player brings more to the table. After 20 years without a title, I think most Arsenal fans would prioritize this chase.

Now, if only he was a little more interesting to follow on Instagram…