Chelsea “environment” the problem, not €88m attacker, claims former Blues player | OneFootball

Former Chelsea player Scott Minto has been speaking about Mykhailo Mudryk and his ill-fated move to Stamford Bridge last January. It’s become one of the best examples of the foolish spending made by this ownership.

The Ukraine international’s move to Arsenal felt like it was all wrapped up, before BlueCo Chelsea waddled in with their fat chequebook and hijacked the deal for around €88m.

When Chelsea swooped for him, the Gunners ended up going for Leandro Trossard from Brighton instead. He’s been a great signing for them, and for much less cost than Mudryk. But as Minto has pointed out, that this is as much to do with the environment as the player:

“The only thing I would say to that is that if Mykhaylo Mudryk had gone into Arsenal he’d have been going into great conditions, a great environment and maybe he’d be doing the same sorts of numbers Trossard is,” Minto said in quotes picked up by TBR.

Trossard has actually looked better at Arsenal than Brighton, with better teammates taking his game up a level. Mudryk has looked significantly worse.

A point well made

While we have serious, serious reservations about Mudryk’s quality (or lack of) as a player, we do take Minto’s point. If he had arrived to step into a well oiled machine like Arsenal are at the moment, he would have been able to play to his strengths and would be in a structure which was able to get him the ball in the right areas, and make up for his total lack of defensive application or awareness.

But these hypotheticals are all useless to us now. He’s our player and we’ve got to figure out what to do with him before he ends up being the next Kepa Arrizabalaga. We’ve got to make our team as solid as Arsenal’s, so that players with uneven talents like Mudyrk can shine.