Spurs have agreed a season-long paid loan from Chelsea with a non-mandatory option to buy for around £75m. Mudryk, 25, has not played a competitive minute since November 2024 after his doping case (meldonium) was resolved in July.
Roberto De Zerbi managed him at Shakhtar Donetsk.
In researching this piece, I discovered little joy. The Athletic, two years ago, gave three reasons why Mykhailo Mudryk wasn’t working at Chelsea.
They were:
He does not protect the ball well enough
His movement is erratic
He often reacts too late
De Zerbi and Mudryk have history. In 2021-22 the Italian helped turn the then-raw winger into a star: two goals and nine assists in 19 games under him, part of a broader 12-goal, 17-assist haul in 44 appearances for Shakhtar.
De Zerbi has previously called him “another son,” praised his sensitivity (he “needs affection”), and even said he had Ballon d’Or potential.
That personal connection is the main reason the deal is happening now rather than Mudryk going to Leeds or elsewhere.
My concern is that I would prefer to see personal connections make centre-stage appearances once the team is already there, and the arrival of the Ukrainian now almost certainly smacks of Spurs having run out of options elsewhere.
In and of itself, this is a positive, if it removes another deadbeat from the group- another player who was responsible for two of the worst seasons I have ever witnessed in over 40 years of watching Spurs.
Twenty-one months without competitive football is a long time; match sharpness, decision-making under pressure, and defensive intensity will all need time.
At Chelsea, he showed flashes of the same qualities but was inconsistent: excellent at carrying and taking players on, but he lost the ball too often, over-dribbled, and his end product (finishing and crossing) never became reliable in the Premier League.
Those same weaknesses could be exposed again if De Zerbi’s current Spurs side continues to struggle to impose its possession game quickly.
For most, this is surely not the type of player a squad in a repair and redevelopment mode might need.
The Three Amigos ride out again, later today!!
Mudryk is either another Timo Werner or he could turn out to be good and Chelsea will want to sell him for more than we want to pay...
Either way after a summer of deals that D. Levy would have never considered completing, along come two that he would have been proud of...
The glaringly obvious space that has not been upgraded is centre forward. You can bring in all the tricky, speedy wingers that would get Gerry Francis excited but if there is nobody in the middle to put them away it's all pointless..
Does feel there are moments that we’ve got to eat shit, now that we are in the post Levy era.
This smacks of it, so do some of the prices we’ve paid.
Deals with City and Chelsea are good changes going forward for the club. It a change that many may miss.
Hopefully the Savio premium was that eat shit for quarter of a century of Levy bollox by city and Marmoush was the okay let’s move on.
It is potential the best window for a while and really good if these last outgoings get done.
He’s a bit of a punt, but the DeZerbi component does feel it has a little bit of thought, that the levy era clearly didn’t have.