Stats show Chelsea spent €88m on a player who is unable to pass to his teammates more often than not | OneFootball

Nizaar Kinsella has collected some damning statistics on Mykhailo Mudryk’s performance against Arsenal last night.

One feels that Ukrainian was only in the team because so many other options weren’t available. But it was another desperately poor night from him, almost 18 months in to his Chelsea career after signing for a reported €88m.

Kinsella noted that Mudryk completed no attacking actions against Arsenal. That presumably includes shots on targets, completed dribbles, key passes etc.

So one of our attackers literally did not successfully complete an attacking action. His passing accuracy was the team’s lowest at 63%, just 42% in the Arsenal half. He won one of four duels, and had the fewest touches of any player who started the game on either side.

So he was both totally uninvolved in the game, and also terrible when he did manage to get involved. That passing stat means that he made more passes to Arsenal players than Chelsea players in their half of the field.

The brutal reality of a signing that’s already failed

The problem with Mudryk is that, even on his good days, he’s just a moments player. Every now and again he gets thrown into the mix and completes a nice pass or dribble which gets everyone interested and reminds them of the tools he has.

But that’s not nearly enough. If he’s going to be in the side as an attacker who doesn’t defend, he needs to be a constant threat. That doesn’t mean he has to score or assist every game, it means that minute to minute he needs to be troubling the opposition defence, making them set up differently and think hard about stopping him.

You can only afford a passenger if they’re going to deliver in front of goal every week, and he’s certainly not doing that. Let’s focus on passing to a teammate before we get onto anything more complicated than that.