Inside Chelsea’s Mudryk deal: A red-eye flight, Potter’s promise and £97,000 a week
https://theathletic.com/4093504/2023/01/18/inside-mudryk-deal-Chelsea-arsenal/
Mykhailo Mudryk was supposed to be the key mid-season addition to propel Arsenal to the title — a long-coveted forward who would add greater depth to Mikel Arteta’s options and fuel belief that a 19-year wait to be Premier League champions again is about to come to an end.
Instead, at half-time at Stamford Bridge on Sunday, the Ukraine international forward was paraded as a Chelsea player after signing a contract that could extend to 2031 and, far from breaking the bank, is worth £97,000 a week.
Here, The Athletic tells how Chelsea secured one of European football’s brightest young attacking talents from under the noses of their rivals across the capital, with details including:
Mudryk might have joined Bayer Leverkusen last summer for as little as €20million
Mikel Arteta, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Edu all spoke to Mudryk to try to get him to Arsenal
Shakhtar Donetsk’s director of football attended Chelsea’s recent league loss to Manchester City
The player’s relatively low Chelsea salary is part of a long-term strategy to bring down their overall wage bill
Chelsea may still wallow in mid-table going into Saturday’s game at fellow underachieving heavyweights Liverpool, but their collective mood has been lifted after pulling off one of the most spectacular coups of recent transfer windows.
Just let this sink in for a second: Chelsea are paying Mudryk lower wages than Callum Hudson-Odoi and Ruben Loftus-Cheek.
Admittedly, the salary the Ukrainian will pick up at Stamford Bridge is bigger than that proposed by Arsenal, but not astronomically so. That may surprise those who assume the only reason Chelsea beat Arsenal to the signature of one of the most exciting young talents in Europe is they offered a significantly larger financial package. How else could a player who was posting pictures of himself on social media accounts watching Arsenal games in recent weeks instead end up moving to one of their biggest London rivals — a club who currently sit nine places and 19 points below them in the table?
Chelsea’s transfer business has come under plenty of scrutiny since the Todd Boehly-Clearlake Capital consortium completed their takeover at the end of last May. Should all the respective add-ons in their various deals be triggered, the total sum to which they have committed will exceed £400million ($490m).
But the acquisition of Mudryk for an initial €70million (£61.6m, $75.5m), with a further €30m potentially due in performance-related add-ons, is not about the size of the transfer fee. For starters, Arsenal offered the same amounts and split as Chelsea, albeit the speed at which the various instalments would be paid was markedly different on their bid.
Neither does it boil down to his salary. Mudryk will be earning around £97,000 a week at Chelsea. Arsenal had been speaking to him since October, according to Shakhtar’s chief executive Sergei Palkin, and their contract offer was within £10,000 per week of that eventually accepted across town. Such a relatively small disparity is hardly a deal breaker.
Earning over £5million a year until at least 2030 — the Ukraine international signed a seven-and-a-half-year contract with an option for another 12 months — is still a tidy sum and represents significantly more than he would have been making if he’d stayed at Shakhtar, and marginally more than at Arsenal.
But, in the context of the salaries commanded by other members of Chelsea’s senior squad, it is relatively low on the scale.
Raheem Sterling, admittedly an experienced international, is on over three times that figure.
Academy graduates Loftus-Cheek and Hudson-Odoi are not regulars in the team — the latter is currently on a season-long loan at Bayer Leverkusen — yet receive around £150,000 and £120,000 per week respectively. They are talented players, but the previous Chelsea regime sanctioned those vast sums when they had only a few first-team appearances under their belts.
What the Mudryk deal demonstrates is the new Chelsea co-owners’ long-term plan to try to transform the payroll — to bring in talent on wages deemed more reasonable by current Premier League standards, and not those lavished out during the previous Roman Abramovich era.
Eyebrows have been raised at the length of the contracts the Boehly-Clearlake consortium is handing out to players, and the one signed by Mudryk is the longest yet. But there is a logic to such a policy when it comes to the overall business. The books will carry the transfer fee over the length of the player’s contract. There is sense, too, in having a young player committed over his peak years at £5million a year rather than having to bring in an older free agent who demands double that amount. The policy does not preclude footballers from returning to the negotiating table seeking a pay rise after delivering a number of good seasons.
Others will point to the fact it was the new regime who handed Sterling, who turned 28 last month, his hefty salary back in July, or who gave the green light to Reece James’ pay leaping massively to around £250,000 a week when he signed a contract extension two months later.
But, despite the caveats, the overall intention is established.
The hope is the club’s wage bill will go down over time. A reasonable payroll will then give Chelsea more wriggle room on transfer fees.
Chelsea also see another upside to this.
One of the problems they have always confronted has been the ability to shift underperforming players whose wages make them so much harder to sell on. Should the worst-case scenario play out and Mudryk find life difficult at his new employers, the salary to which he will have grown accustomed would not price him out of the market.
Naturally, there is optimism at Chelsea that this will not be the case. There is also great satisfaction to be had in beating Arsenal to his signature having already signed another of the Premier League leaders’ transfer targets — Joao Felix — on loan from Atletico Madrid this month. The jubilant mood at their Cobham headquarters was exposed by posts on the club’s social media accounts over the weekend, before and after the deal was confirmed.
They are still celebrating the fact Mudryk headed to west London rather than its northern districts.
Rewind a few weeks and few would have thought that likely.
Chelsea spotted an opportunity.
Just a fortnight ago, the sense within the game was that Arsenal were on the verge of formalising a long-mooted deal with Shakhtar to sign Mudryk as a mid-season fillip for their ongoing title challenge.
When former Shakhtar, Chelsea and Arsenal winger Willian went out for dinner with the Ukrainian club’s director of football Darijo Srna and ex-Arsenal and Shakhtar forward Eduardo da Silva in London that week, the conversation lingered for a while on Mudryk and how eager the league leaders were to secure the now 22-year-old.
And yet, just 24 hours later, Srna was pictured in a VIP box high up in the west stand at Chelsea’s home game against Manchester City on what happened to be Mudryk’s birthday. The Shakhtar official was in attendance as a guest of the host club but, earlier in the day, the future of the Ukrainians’ star player had been discussed with members of the Boehly-Clearlake ownership.
Those present crunched some numbers, for all that nothing formal was proposed. Chelsea’s opening offer, when it came, did not come close to that made by Arsenal, who remained the front runners to sign the player.
Darijo Srna was at Chelsea vs Manchester City two weeks ago
Mudryk had been a target for Arsenal since the summer, when they identified the need to bring in a wide forward after sanctioning Nicolas Pepe’s season-long loan to French club Nice. Their first choice had been Raphinha, and at one stage they had actually found themselves competing with Chelsea for the Leeds player, only for the Brazilian ultimately to prefer Barcelona.
They then turned their attention to Pedro Neto of Wolves, but that interest was eventually dropped after they deemed their fellow Premier League club’s valuation too high. Heading into the final few days of the summer window, Mudryk figured prominently in Arsenal’s thoughts, but injuries to Thomas Partey and Mohamed Elneny made them pivot towards trying to sign a central midfielder instead. Ultimately that, too, came to nothing.
At that time, the fee being suggested for Mudryk was significantly lower. Bayer Leverkusen of the German Bundesliga thought they had an agreement in place with Shakhtar and the player to sign him for as little as €20million. The goalposts only shifted once it became clear that there were other suitors in the market.
Brentford made a club-record offer of around €30million at the end of the summer window and, briefly, believed a deal was close. Everton and Newcastle were also showing significant interest.
One fact that may raise some alarm bells for Chelsea fans is that a rival Premier League club made some background calls about Mudryk and did not receive rave assessments of his character.
As it transpired, Mudryk was thrust more into the spotlight as FIFA, world football’s governing body, ruled that overseas players could unilaterally suspend their contracts with clubs in war-torn Ukraine, thereby effectively denying Shakhtar not only the services of the 14 foreigners on their books but also the opportunity to sell them.
They opted instead to develop a strategy to market homegrown winger Mudryk as their most valuable asset.
That task was made easier as he shone initially in the Champions League group stage, scoring as RB Leipzig were thumped 4-1 in Germany and then in home and away 1-1 draws with Scottish champions Celtic. He also impressed at home against reigning European champions Real Madrid in a 1-1 draw.
His work ethic off the field improved as well — he would regularly stay on after training for further practice, polishing his skill set. His band of suitors took note.
Arsenal were increasingly convinced he would be the perfect January acquisition for them — someone who could make an immediate impact to bolster this season’s surprise title push, perhaps as a match-winner off the bench, but also a figure who would become a key part of the project for years to come. They felt adding him to Gabriel Martinelli, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Jesus would give them one of the most exciting groups of attackers in Europe.
The club’s recruitment team, including sporting director Edu, stepped up their efforts to make a deal happen.
As Palkin told The Athletic: “Arsenal contacted the player almost one and a half months before they contacted us. Can you imagine, for example, to have (the manager) Mikel Arteta, (Arsenal’s Ukrainian player) Oleksandr Zinchenko and the sporting director calling you, to have Arsenal calling you almost every day, every two days, every three days? You can want or not want the move, but you follow this kind of reception and contacts.”
The Ukrainian club’s asking price had been established as €100million, but Arsenal were still confident a compromise could be struck for a lower fee.
Palkin confirmed he met Arsenal on more occasions than he did Chelsea. Arsenal made three offers in all, the final one coming last Thursday, which reached the €70million-plus-€30million threshold. But Shakhtar were unhappy with the schedule of the payments, and the achievements that would trigger the add-ons, proposed by Edu. The negotiations became tense, the talks increasingly challenging.
No agreement was struck.
In essence, Arsenal had given Chelsea something to beat and, crucially, the current world champions then took matters into their own hands.
Last Friday night, co-owner Behdad Eghbali and recently appointed director of global talent and transfers Paul Winstanley boarded a red-eye flight to Antalya in Turkey, where Shakhtar were holding a training camp during the Ukrainian season’s winter break. They arrived on Saturday morning with Shakhtar agreeing to a meeting at a hotel near their base in the seaside town of Belek.
Those face-to-face discussions were attended by Palkin, Srna, and also by Mudryk and his representatives.
It should be acknowledged that prior to those talks in Turkey, having spoken to both Arteta and the Chelsea head coach Graham Potter, Mudryk’s own priority had been securing a move to Arsenal. Yet, with Arsenal having since made clear how much they were prepared to pay and when, an offer Shakhtar had effectively knocked back, the player was now confronting a straight choice between staying at the Ukrainian club until the summer or joining Chelsea.
Step forward Egbhali and Winstanley to deliver their own sales pitch. Over eight to 10 hours of presentations and talks, they put forward Chelsea’s case.
It was stressed to Mudryk that Chelsea would provide him with a platform to excel. He would have a major role to play in the club’s new project as a key player in coach Potter’s team. Despite the squad at Stamford Bridge already having several players who operate in Mudryk’s favoured position off the left, Eghbali and Winstanley stressed how he would arguably face stiffer competition for game-time from 21-year-old Brazil international Martinelli if he chose to join Arsenal.
As well as their footballing arguments, Shakhtar were also impressed by Chelsea’s pastoral plan to bed in a player who has spent the past year playing against the backdrop of war in his homeland.
Palkin admits what Eghbali and Winstanley said made a huge impression on everyone in the room.
“When they explain to you the whole story and you look for the next two, three, four, five years, then you see they have a serious project,” Palkin added. “I believe they will build one of the best clubs in the world because I am telling you, they are very serious in all directions: sports science, the stadium side, the commercial side, on all things. For us, they looked very ambitious.”
Chelsea duly met Shakhtar’s €70million-plus-€30million demands too, with the Ukrainian club happier regarding the speed at which the instalments would be delivered. Those add-ons depend on Chelsea winning the Premier League and Champions League during Mudryk’s time at the club. Crucially, even with the team currently 10th in the table and 10 points outside the top four, Shakhtar felt this was a more realistic goal than what would be needed to trigger those in Arsenal’s package.
The club’s owner, Rinat Akhmetov, was not present in Turkey but he spoke to Chelsea’s representatives by telephone once a deal had been struck in principle.
If there had been an opportunity for Arsenal to make a counter-offer, it was passed up. They had indicated the structure of the deal they were prepared to strike and, for all that the talks had become strained, believed the ball still to be in Shakhtar’s court.
Fundamentally, what seems to have made the biggest difference was Chelsea’s more proactive approach. A source privy to the situation, who asked not to be named to protect their position, explained why they beat Arsenal to the signing: “Who was out there (in Turkey) and who was not out there?”
A pre-agreement was in place, and some initial paperwork got signed.
Eghbali, Winstanley, Mudryk and Srna then flew, all on the same plane, to London to complete the formalities, with the player undertaking his medical on Sunday.
Everything was finalised in time for Mudryk to attend the match at home to Crystal Palace that afternoon and be presented to the fans at half-time.
A very content Potter, who The Athletic revealed had pushed for the signing to be made and spoke to Mudryk as part of the process, detailed what he believes the player will bring to his side in the aftermath of that 1-0 victory. He will make him integral to his team.
“He’s a player with a big future,” he said. “He’s exciting one versus one, he’s very direct, he attacks the back line, can go into wide areas but also affects the goal; a really exciting player and I think our supporters will really like him.
“We want to do better. We want to play better, to get more points and wins. You need a squad that is balanced, that has the right amount of competition, and I think he brings that.”
The prospect of Mudryk making his debut against Liverpool in Saturday’s lunchtime game is enticing, but some level of realism is still required.
Until his breakthrough this season, he had scored just twice in 47 appearances for three different clubs in his homeland — including, ironically, a loan spell at Arsenal Kyiv in 2019 — and he has just eight senior caps with only four starts.
Expectations need to reflect the reality that he is a player of great potential, but one who is far from the finished article.
He has also not played in a competitive match since November 23, due to the winter break in his homeland, and will inevitably be short of match fitness. It will be some ask for him to play the full 90 minutes at Anfield.
But, while Arsenal lick their wounds and look elsewhere for targets in the remaining two weeks of the winter window, Chelsea can be optimistic that they have a new talent in their midst to help drive them towards better times over the second half of the season.
Additional reporting: David Ornstein and James McNicholas
40 days after this match, the first iPhone launched, on June 29, 2007 Number one song in the UK charts (was number one for the next 10 weeks straight)