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.
Mykhailo Mudryk completed no attacking actions vs Arsenal, except four final third entries. His passing accuracy was the lowest at 63.6% and dropped to 42.9% in the opposition half. He also had the fewest touches (32) of any of the starting XI and won just one of his four duels.
— Nizaar Kinsella (@NizaarKinsella) April 24, 2024
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.
Spend 5 mins, nay 2 mins, watching Mudryk when the ball is anywhere in his vicinity—doesn’t matter whether his team is in possession or out—and you’ll see a player who has a profoundly LOW football IQ. For example, his “defensive” positioning against Arsenal was laughable. The ball would come to the wing deep in our territory and he neither pressured it nor cut off a passing lane. It’s insane how clueless he is! And in possession you’d think he’d be providing us threat in behind. He could have absolutely shredded Ben a white for pure pace, but he NEVER MADE THE RUN, lol!
It’s a total puzzle what is running through his mind, but one thing is for sure—he has no business taking the field for the first team until/unless he gets a CLUE about how to play the game!
But he was playing number 10 not wing side