We’ve been as frustrated as anyone by Mykhailo Mudryk in his time at Chelsea. Wingers are by their nature frustrating to watch because of their role in the team, and it’s made that much worse when they’re playing poorly.
But we’ve got nothing against the guy, and we’d like nothing more than to see him succeed – so last night’s great performance against Panathinaikos in the Conference League was a delight, and we hope to see more of it in months to come. It’s quite clearly been a tough time for him since coming to the club, and it was nice to see him smiling, and to hear him speak after the game about how happy he was after a goal and two assists:
“I’m so happy to score. Every player when they score is really happy. It wasn’t an easy ball with the ball falling behind me, but I scored it and we managed to win as well,” the winger explained of his goal.
“I think the game wasn’t that easy. It was good for us to score first. We fought well, we stuck to the plan and we got the result,” he concluded.
Mudryk making progress
He’s spot on – the final score makes it look easy, but it was anything but, especially early on where the spirited Greek opposition played through our makeshift midfield and had the crowd behind them. The game could have gone in a very different direction – but Mudryk’s clever assist across the box to Joao Felix opened the floodgates, and changed the direction of the game.
He still has work to do to get Premier League starts, but this was a great sign of progress in his game. He will need to keep replicating it as the opposition gets tougher in this competition – but we’re sure he can do it.