Arsenal walked-off their highly anticipated Mykhaylo Mudryk pursuit, as the talented winger jumped the boat of their neighbours, Chelsea. The West Londoners shelled out a whopping €70m on Mudryk’s acquisition, with another €30m promised to Shakhtar in add-ons, taking the whole package to the century mark of €100m. It was rather an evaluation which the Gunners were unwilling to fork out, which took Mudryk away from them.
However, Arsenal’s reluctance to pay the triple-figure fee for Mykhaylo Mudryk has a lot of rocket science and conscience behind it. The Gunners have been clear with their spending over the last few years, to be precise, the have been one of the biggest spenders not only in the Premier League, but across Europe. As a result, eyebrows were raised at their decision of restraining themselves from paying the €100m for Mudryk, a player they had been tracking since over a month.
What exactly held back Arsenal from paying €100m for Mykhaylo Mudryk
Arsenal may have been among the biggest spenders since the start of the 21/22 season, forking out a staggering €300m across the three transfer windows. It was being deemed that the sleeping giant has awaken and with their recent lure being successful in the acquisitions of Manchester City duo Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko, Mykhaylo Mudryk was already in their bag.
Moreover, the winger too wanted the move direly as was evident from his social media posts which were flooded with Arsenal’s content. The Premier League club too had established concrete contacts with his agents in December last year, and even had agreed on personal terms for a potential five-year deal. However, Shakhtar were adamant on their demand of ‘€100m for Mudryk or no deal’, even citing Manchester United’s instance where they paid the same amount for Antony last summer.
However, that is where it all came down tumbling for Arsenal and their Mudryk quest. The Gunners agreed to pay €70m as fixed fee, and another €25m in add-ons, making it a €95m package, €5m short of the magic figure. But Shakhtar have now revealed that the add-ons mentioned by Arsenal were to hypothetical and difficult to attain. As a result, they insisted on altering the add-ons structure, to which the Gunners responded with a firm ‘NO’.
Arsenal have been pretty clear with their spending despite the €300m expenditure in recent windows, and have adapted a policy where they will only pay for their potential target what they think is the right amount. Restraining themselves from indulging in unnecessary or avoidable bidding wars has become their motto, which was firmly asserted during the Mykhaylo Mudryk negotiations.
The club displayed through letting go Mudryk that they were not going to get ‘bullied’ into paying the €100m demanded by Shakhtar. That they had survived earlier as well despite their prime target joining a rival after holding talks with them. A similar situation had emerged in the summer, when Arsenal wanted Ajax’s Lisandro Martinez. However, the Eredivisie club were clear that they wanted more than €50m for the Argentine, a fee Arsenal denied to pay.
As a result, the newly crowned World Cup winner joined Manchester United to reunite with Erik ten Hag, for a stunning €57m. On the other hand, Arsenal didn’t put themselves in a panic mode, as only after a few days later, they signed City’s four-time Premier League champion Oleksandr Zinchenko for just €35m, €22m less than what United paid for Martinez, an outsider for English football.
The results are clear, Zinchenko recently delivered a masterclass performance against Tottenham in the North London Derby to help Arsenal to their first away win against their rivals in nine years. Manager Mikel Arteta knew he would be posed with the Mykhaylo Mudryk questions, and he calmly answered them, laying bare the club’s policy of valuing ‘discipline’ in the market. He said:
“I am very proud to have the players that we have. We always want to try to improve the squad. The club are the first ones to try to do everything they can to improve the players we have. But I think we have to have some discipline and we have to be very consistent in the targets we want, but as well what we are able to do in each moment. We can make the players better, let’s focus on that.”
That should be self-explanatory about why Arsenal actually let go Mykhaylo Mudryk. The club rather stuck to their policy, and happily let Chelsea have their pie for €100m. But that’s not the end of it for Arsenal. They have demonstrated that they are well capable of overcoming such set-backs and will surely have a backup plan ready. And as their history tells, Arsenal will be out there to prove again that they made the right call, by leaving Shakhtar, Mykhaylo Mudryk and Chelsea alone.