Chelsea should not have signed one of their attackers, that is according to ESPN pundit Janusz Michallik.
Chelsea spent big money on Mykhailo Mudryk last January, paying Shakhtar Donetsk an initial £62m fee (BBC Sport) for his signature.
However, speaking on ESPN, Michallik has claimed that the Blues made a mistake signing the winger.
Mudryk, who earns £100,000 a week (Spotrac) at Stamford Bridge, has failed to light up the Premier League since arriving.
This season, the 23-year-old has scored just three goals in the English top flight, while last term he failed to net at all.
Janusz Michallik labels Mykhailo Mudryk a Chelsea mistake
Michallik was helping categorise Chelsea’s signings under Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital on ESPN. And when it came to Mudryk, the former USA international put him in the “mistake” box.
On the Ukrainian, Michallik said: “Well, he’s a mistake obviously. You have to wonder about his mentality as well. I mean, first and foremost, I feel for him because by the sounds [of it] he himself didn’t want to go to Chelsea, wanted to go to Arsenal and obviously it didn’t happen for him.”
Still time for Mykhailo Mudryk to prove that he was not a mistake
Mudryk still has time to turn his Chelsea career around. The season is not finished yet and the Ukraine international is still only 23.
If Mudryk cannot convince Mauricio Pochettino before the end of the campaign, though, it looks like he could go out on loan in the summer.
According to journalist Simon Phillips, Chelsea have already discussed allowing the former Shakhtar star to join another club temporarily for the 2024/25 season.
To spend the kind of money the Blues did on Mudryk and then loan him out is mad, but they have already done it with Romelu Lukaku twice, while the wide man is not playing right now. It would, therefore, not be a surprise if the club actually did send him somewhere else in the summer.
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