Mykhailo Mudryk: a plea for patience at Chelsea
Mykhailo Mudryk’s move from Ukraine framed him as a superstar in waiting. So let’s wait.
A long Bank Holiday weekend is fast approaching and what a weekend it’ll be for English football. With the season continuing elsewhere, ours is entering its final days.
Those of us in non-league have been wandering aimlessly through the hinterland of 2022/23 for a month now (mostly – congratulations to FA Vase winners Ascot United) and will soon be joined by everyone else.
But not before three fantastic days of domestic football.
On Saturday, Coventry City and Luton Town contest the Championship Play-Off Final. I’d like the Sky Blues to win it but let’s be honest, it’s a refreshing change from the Premier League’s usual yo-yo clubs either way.
On Sunday, Wembley hosts the League Two Play-Off Final. After dramatic semis – grow up – Carlisle United and Stockport County will go at it with promotion up for grabs before the Premier League finale later in the afternoon. There’s still a lot to play for, not least in the match I’ll be attending.
And on Monday, the League One Play-Off Final pits Barnsley against South Yorkshire rivals Sheffield Wednesday somehow. Enjoy.
High Protein Beef Paste will continue throughout the summer and beyond so please spread the word as far and wide as you can. Love you. Here’s a thing about Mykhailo Mudryk.
Mykhailo Mudryk: a plea for patience at Chelsea
In normal circumstances it would have looked as if Mykhailo Mudryk had the world at his feet. In demand and in the spotlight, Mudryk made the move to Chelsea over Arsenal and became a Premier League footballer ten days after his 22nd birthday.
And not just a Premier League footballer; a Premier League footballer with a haircut, all brashness and braggadocio. Mudryk is a young man who lets his football do the talking but is anything but a shrinking violet on the field. He wants to be the centre of attention. He acts like it and he plays like it. Mudryk has star quality and he knows it.
But these were not normal circumstances. Mudryk is Ukrainian, from near Kharkiv, and left behind a nation under attack. He joined Chelsea from Shakhtar Donetsk, who’ve been displaced to Lviv, Kharkiv and then Kyiv since the outbreak of war in Donbas in 2014.
His reported £62 million fee after catching the eye in continental club competitions represents an additional pressure for a player so young and Mudryk landed himself in a suboptimal situation in England from the off. Managed at first by a good coach who wasn’t wanted and then by a poor coach who was, the winger shouldn’t really have been expected to hit the ground running.
Mudryk joined Shakhtar from Dnipro in 2016 and eventually made his name after a couple of loan spells within Ukraine. The appointment of Roberto De Zerbi – also now in the Premier League – was the making of him. He was Shakhtar’s Player of the Year in 2021 and 2022 as well as Ukraine’s Footballer of the Year in 2022, and the future rises up before him still.
Mudryk’s reputation oozed out of the edges of wartime Ukrainian football. Catalysed by his performances in the UEFA Champions League and a national team shirt, Mudryk was catapulted into the cauldron of European transfer gossip and he became one of the players whose name suddenly appeared everywhere. Soon, the big move was inevitable.
It’s hardly uncharitable to report that Mudryk hasn’t yet shown English football supporters what he can do. Over his 14 appearances in the Premier League so far he’s averaged 43 minutes on the pitch. He has a couple of assists to his name but the narrative is already taking hold.
Mudryk is a bust. Mudryk is a waste of money. Mudryk is this and Mudryk is that.
Such is the life of an elite footballer: the only context that matters when you commanded a fee of tens of millions of pounds is no context at all. Chuck in the breakneck immediacy and throwaway nature of the vacuous bullshit that passes as football discourse and all we’re left with is unfeeling caricatures.
Mudryk is learning his trade in the bright white glare of football’s most celebrated league. Playing for Chelsea comes with pressure at the best of times. These are not the best of times but the spotlight is no more dull and Mudryk’s price tag is difficult for critics to ignore.
Scrutiny is unavoidable and analysis is warranted but condemnation, so early in Mudryk’s career at Stamford Bridge, is not. It’s as speculative to write him off as to predict a Ballon d’Or win at this point, which is to say it’s ridiculous and premature.
Players take time to adapt and fit into new clubs, some more than others. The player and their circumstances are variables. The club is too.
At the time of writing Chelsea have played 26 matches in all competitions in 2023 and lost more than half of them. They’ve won one of the last twelve. It’s hardly the first time in their history they’ve struggled for form but in the modern era that record is most unchelsea.
They started the year with Graham Potter in charge and will end the season with Frank Lampard back in the dugout. The club’s facilities are full to bursting thanks to Todd Boehly’s housewarming shopping spree and the rumoured treatment meted out to Potter by that enormous squad rightly attracted negative headlines.
It is, to put it mildly, a bin fire. Irrespective of subsequent moves to rectify the situation, these circumstances do not a successful assimilation make. Nevertheless, Mudryk’s introduction has been less than impressive and it would be remiss to demand pause without acknowledging the arguments against it.
There’s something in Mudryk’s style, his gait, his face, that rubs a certain type of supporter up the wrong way. That’s especially acute when the team is in a difficult moment; when Chelsea’s form in the calendar year puts them in the bottom quarter of the league, they’re in a difficult moment.
But it’s also true Mudryk hasn’t found his Premier League groove yet. He’s a very fine winger, of that I am convinced because I’ve seen him be so on several occasions. The step up is one I think he can and will handle but when I watch at the moment he’s not there yet.
His attacking numbers at Chelsea aren’t bobbing along beneath their Shakhtar equivalents so much as dragging themselves through the dirt. Mudryk averaged an entire goal contribution per 90 minutes more in the early part of Shakhtar’s season – during which he was improving upon the seasons before – than in the last part of Chelsea’s.
It’s at the other end where under-performing wingers often attract the harshest criticism. In attack, they’re misfiring. If they’re struggling going the other way it’s their character and work ethic that are questioned. Mudryk attempts and wins more tackles than Jack Grealish but significantly fewer of them are in Chelsea’s defensive third.
There are one or two rays of light in Mudryk’s numbers. In terms of shot-creating action, his per-90 tally is higher than that of Bernardo Silva, Joe Willock, Jarrod Bowen, Cody Gakpo, Marcus Rashford and more than 400 others. Thin gruel, perhaps, but something to nibble upon nonetheless.
Mudryk is a dribbler, a ball carrier, but his feet haven’t yet worked out how to deliver on that in the Premier League. His take-on success rate is poor but his progressive carries into the opposition penalty area and especially into the attacking third are much more promising.
The truth behind all of these numbers is that the only thing we know for sure is that it’s a vanishingly small sample size.
Chelsea’s analysts are looking at a ton of data and are far more qualified than anyone else to interpret the facts. For the rest of us, Mudryk’s playing time for Chelsea is low enough that his statistical performance can lurch in one direction or the other based on very little new input.
And that, ultimately, is the point. Mudryk’s switch to the Premier League was a big life change for a young professional who moved away from an extremely traumatic situation in Ukraine. If you layer in all the details it’s surprising how little precedent there is. It’s also so fresh that we’re picking the bones out of percentages and rates that mean bugger all.
The bottom line is Mudryk just got here. There’s good reason aplenty for him to be distracted just that tiny amount that makes it more challenging to adapt to a step up that’s stumped many players before him who didn’t have to mentally wrestle with the horror of a war every morning.
Let’s be patient. Let’s take a step back and judge Mudryk when he’s been here for a year, when Chelsea are competitive again, when his manager isn’t Frank Lampard. He’s shown enough in his career already to deserve at least that. The millstone of a hefty transfer fee wouldn’t be there in the first place if he hadn’t.
Mudryk remains an exciting prospect. He has electric pace, serious swagger and a hunger for the limelight. He has quick feet that can take him past a player in the blink of an eye. He can score and create and he’s proved that elsewhere.
Yes, it’s a new challenge for him. But it’s too soon to write him off given the quality he demonstrated in Ukraine and in Europe. The cruel twist is that the club who forked out big money for Mudryk will do so again to replace him. Time is seldom a footballer’s friend.
Chelsea’s new manager will be under pressure to deliver quickly for an owner whose own patience is still an unknown quantity. He’ll attempt to do so at least in part by spending the money Boehly will presumably throw at him before he’s even taken off his coat.
That’s bad news for Mudryk but it’s a test he must pass to prove his worth as a player with ambitions to be at the top end of the Premier League. Don’t be surprised if he does it.
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“A sport that has rolled out the red carpet to the gambling industry in almost every accessible corner should consider a high-profile case of this nature has been waiting to happen.
“Toney’s breaches are not to be excused and may not be analysed until the independent commission publishes its written reasons, but it is a fact that at least three of his employers – including Brentford – have gladly plastered betting firms’ names on the fronts of their shirts, a form of advertisement that will be banned in 2026.”
Nick Ames considers the inconvenient truth of football’s relationship with the bookies. Ivan Toney’s eight-month ban is his own doing and his own story to tell, but if a sport knows it needs to punish a player to such an extent then it should also be asking itself whether gambling companies are appropriate partners.
And that’s just the real ones.
Salty beef extracts
Everything Man City achieve comes with a caveat – welcome to the third age of football (i)
Football fans, the national anthem and a battle for who controls the public space (The Guardian)
From European glory to relegation: the decline of Turbine Potsdam (The Guardian)
Eamonn Bannon on Dundee United’s class of 83: ‘The shame is it will never be repeated’ (The Observer)
When Manchester City found themselves getting relegated by Luton Town (Football365)
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