Analysing Mykhailo Mudryk: A year on from his arrival, where does he fit in at Chelsea? (2024)

“It was an unnecessary risk to have him on the pitch. That is why we changed it.”

Mauricio Pochettino was referring to the danger of a second yellow card when asked why he substituted Mykhailo Mudryk at half-time of Chelsea’s 6-1 win over Middlesbrough in the second leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final, but he might just as easily have been talking about the Ukrainian winger’s general performance.

A little more than a year after Chelsea paid an initial £62million (now $79m; €73m) to acquire him from Shakhtar Donetsk at the expense of rivals Arsenal, Mudryk looked as lost in the opening 45 minutes against Championship opposition as he has at any point in his career in England. All of the flaws that have held him back over the last 12 months were on display, attracting the frequent and visible ire of his team-mates and his head coach.

Mudryk’s 40 appearances across all competitions for Chelsea have yielded four goals, four assists and tantalising glimpses of the explosive speed and skill that made him such an exciting and coveted prospect at Shakhtar.

But he is struggling to make a consistent positive impact in matches. Many of the reasons why have been detailed by Sebastien Chapuis, a UEFA A Licence-qualified coach and Chelsea supporter who was consulted for this article.

The Athletic looks at three key reasons…

He does not protect the ball well enough

Taking risks is a fundamental part of a winger’s job, but the most successful wingers know where and when to do so.

Beyond his spectacular, slaloming dribbles, Eden Hazard was a master at protecting the ball by keeping his body (often his much-heralded backside) between it and defenders; even when opposing teams sent multiple players to dispossess him, the likeliest outcome was a Chelsea free kick. Willian also excelled at this for much of his time at Stamford Bridge.

Mudryk, in contrast, has lost possession within five seconds of receiving a pass on 50 occasions in 807 Premier League minutes this season. That equates to 5.5 times per 90 minutes, a higher rate than any other winger in the division. Overall, he has lost possession 39 times per 100 touches in 2023-24, also the worst rate of any attacking midfielder or winger with more than 500 minutes played in the league.

As can be seen from the graphic below, majority of these turnovers occur when he receives passes near the left touchline in the middle third of the pitch — not an area in which wingers typically take big risks.

Many of them play out like the sequence below against Crystal Palace: Mudryk receives a pass down the line from Levi Colwill and his first touch takes the ball infield, away from his body and gives one of several opponents a chance to go for it. On this occasion, Nathaniel Clyne can slide in and deprive him of a second touch:

This instinct to shift the ball infield can work, particularly when team-mates are close enough to combine with. Earlier in the same game, a similar Mudryk first touch is actually a first-time pass to Christopher Nkunku, whose return layoff allows him to burst infield between two defenders and thread a sublime ball through to Ian Maatsen:

But the problem is that Mudryk moves the ball infield with his first touch too often, meaning opponents can anticipate it and position themselves to make a quick tackle. He rarely controls the ball and lays it back, and almost never looks to spin in the opposite direction and dribble down the line; even the credible threat of him doing so would serve to keep defenders off balance and less able to pressure him immediately.

Mudryk is capable of protecting the ball and when he does, the game can open up for him.

In the next example, his first touch keeps the ball close and pins Clyne to his back, drawing a second defender and freeing up Moises Caicedo for a pass. This enables him to offload the ball, spin away into space and, in the blink of an eye, he is racing onto a Nicolas Jackson backheel and through on goal:

This needs to become the rule rather than the exception because Mudryk’s turnovers in the middle third of the pitch typically result in opposing teams running at the Chelsea defence and naturally erode the trust of his team-mates — and of Pochettino.

His movement is erratic

For someone who has been training with this group of players at Cobham for the last six months, it is startling how often Mudryk appears to be on a different wavelength from many of his Chelsea team-mates. This is a problem for Pochettino, whose positional game requires his players to dominate by controlling space and pursue numerical superiority through how they arrange themselves on the pitch.

Mudryk’s movement — in particular, his decisions about when to stay wide and when to drift infield — too often undermines that.

Below is an example from the Middlesbrough game: Cole Palmer receives a pass from Thiago Silva and the arrangement of players on the pitch indicates he should spin towards Chelsea’s left flank. Armando Broja and Enzo Fernandez are already in the central area, so Mudryk should look to peel away into the space nearer the touchline, where Ben Chilwell is pointing. Instead, he jogs infield, further cluttering things up, and Palmer is left with no good forward options:

A key skill for all attacking midfielders and wingers is creating separation from their markers to receive a pass. In the case of wingers, this most often takes the form of peeling away from the opposing full-back out towards the touchline, which generates the space to control the ball and then dribble at a 45-degree angle towards goal.

Raheem Sterling is very good at this; see the below example against Fulham, where he runs diagonally away from Caicedo to maximise the space he can then use to drive towards the visiting penalty area:

Mudryk instead often angles his runs inward from the left, which at best narrows the space for him to receive a pass and at worst removes him as an option entirely. In this jarring sequence against Palace, he actually runs in front of Nkunku, and the Frenchman is forced to turn back:

Mudryk can also complicate decisions for his team-mates by changing his mind at the last moment. Here against Brighton, he presents to receive a short pass from Fernandez in a central area inside his own half, then decides to start running upfield as the ball is being played. The result is a sloppy turnover, much to the visible frustration of Fernandez:

Misunderstandings between team-mates are a part of football, but a disproportionate number of the ones that occur at Chelsea involve Mudryk.

In the first half of the Middlesbrough game, Fernandez turns smartly into space and signals that Mudryk should be running in behind the opposing full-back, but the opportunity is lost and he is forced to play backwards. When he gets the ball back a few seconds later, the Ukrainian gets the message and, despite giving his opponent a significant head start, beats him to the ball and is unlucky not to win a corner kick:

This example is linked to the third big reason Mudryk is struggling…

He often reacts too late

Mudryk’s otherworldly speed is his football superpower, and there have been moments this season when it has made him a real asset to Chelsea — most notably, against Brighton, when his lightning run through the middle of the pitch supercharged a counter-attack from a defensive corner that yielded Fernandez’s decisive penalty kick.

But too often, the impact of his speed is not felt as it should be in matches because he reacts to events rather than anticipating them.

This is particularly glaring when crosses are delivered from the right flank. Mudryk’s most important contribution to Chelsea since joining was his 92nd-minute equaliser against Newcastle in the Carabao Cup quarter-final at Stamford Bridge, but the irony is he only scored that goal because he was late arriving in the penalty area.

As you can see below, Mudryk is nowhere to be seen as Malo Gusto prepares to cross from the right. Kieran Trippier makes a routine clearance unchallenged by the Ukrainian from a similar delivery moments earlier, and feels so little pressure this time that he decides to cushion a header back to Martin Dubravka. If he gets it right, Chelsea are out of the Carabao Cup. But he makes an unforced error, and Mudryk’s speed is enough to capitalise:

Not attacking the back post when crosses are delivered from the right is a pattern for Mudryk, and at times it looks as if he is too slow to recognise a developing move and turn on the jets from his starting position wide on the left.

Chelsea’s second goal against Middlesbrough is a case in point. The moment Axel Disasi commits to passing down the line to Sterling on the right, Mudryk and Fernandez are a similar distance from the penalty area. The difference is Fernandez anticipates Sterling managing to connect with Disasi’s underlapping run and by the time the Frenchman is ready to cut the ball back, he is close enough to attack the back post. Mudryk never reaches the box:

Using his speed to more proactively and aggressively crash the back post would be a relatively easy way for Mudryk to get himself more scoring chances, and he has shown he can be composed finisher in the penalty area. But there is also a cost to him not doing so; unless Chelsea can get midfielders into the box instead, it means back-post crosses become instant turnovers — or they are simply no longer attempted at all.

Mudryk turned 23 this month but plays with the rawness of a teenager in the Premier League. Perhaps that should not be a surprise, since Middlesbrough at Stamford Bridge was only his 100th senior match at club level. Fernandez, 12 days his junior, has had more than twice as many minutes on the pitch (11,137) as Mudryk (5,103) has in his professional club career.

He is a developmental project with a lot still to learn — a view shared by former caretaker manager Frank Lampard, according to his uncle Harry Redknapp.

“I remember talking to Frank, Chelsea bought the left-winger (Mudryk) for about £90m,” Redknapp told Kammy and Ben’s Proper Football Podcast in November. “Frank says, ‘Harry, he’s so quick, he’s lightning, but he doesn’t know the game’.”

The wisdom of agreeing to pay an initial £62m for a developmental project is open to question, though Chelsea would argue that Mudryk has the length of a contract that runs until 2030 — with an option to extend for a year beyond that — to validate their big bet on his talent.

Even amid the underwhelming early returns, Mudryk has flashed enough to underscore his huge potential. He is not just a gifted athlete, but a freakishly explosive one who becomes a blur in open space. He can be a sharp dribbler, an incisive passer and a cool finisher. Those tools are real and valuable.

It also cannot be forgotten that the first chapter of his Chelsea career has played out against a backdrop of managerial instability, the pressure of a big price tag and the daily horror of a brutal war raging in his homeland. Those things should buy him a measure of patience.

But the Premier League is football’s least forgiving environment. Mistakes on the pitch will be exposed and exploited and while Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital have every financial reason to take the long view with Mudryk, Pochettino’s job is to build a winning team. That aim will naturally lead him to favour the players who can reliably play within his system.

(Top photo: Getty Images)