Chelsea set £75m marker as Mudryk completes Tottenham loan

Tottenham beat Leeds United to sign Chelsea winger Mykhailo Mudryk on loan, agreeing a deal that includes a £75m option to buy, according to the BBC.

How Spurs pulled off the late hijack

Nizaar Kinsella reported for the BBC that Mudryk became the first player to move from Chelsea to Tottenham in 17 years, and the first loanee to join Spurs from Chelsea since 1992. Not something you see every window.

Leeds thought they had this one won. Their proposed package included a loan fee, full wage coverage, and penalties if Mudryk wasn’t played regularly – the kind of terms that show how badly they wanted him.

Chelsea rejected at least two Leeds offers across talks that dragged on for more than two weeks. Leeds stayed hopeful because Mudryk himself preferred a move to Elland Road. Brentford also sniffed around, having tried for him back in 2022, but Chelsea wouldn’t budge on the cheap option-to-buy clause they wanted.

Then Chelsea and Tottenham went club-to-club over Mudryk and Tosin Adarabioyo on the same day, blindsiding Leeds completely and helping us trim the squad at exactly the right moment in the window.

Mudryk reunites with his old mentor

The 25-year-old Ukraine international has already returned to action, coming off the bench for Roberto de Zerbi’s side against Nottingham Forest – his first competitive appearance in more than 21 months. That’s a serious layoff, and it tells you why Mudryk’s path back into contention at Chelsea had become such a complicated one.

De Zerbi managed Mudryk at Shakhtar Donetsk, and that relationship is clearly a big part of why Spurs won this race in the end. We’ve covered why a loan made sense for all parties before this deal materialised, and the De Zerbi connection was always the wildcard.

The £75m option to buy is the number that matters most here. It’s considered unlikely to be triggered, but it sets a high benchmark for whatever asking price we’d want next summer if we do decide to sell.

For Chelsea, this was as much about squad management as it was about Mudryk’s next chapter. Getting numbers down at a crucial stage of deadline day, while planting a valuation marker for the future, is a decent outcome given how messy his time at Stamford Bridge had become.

In other news…

Leeds didn’t leave the window empty-handed. After missing out on Mudryk, they moved for Eintracht Frankfurt attacker Jean-Matteo Bahoya, using an extended deal-sheet deadline to get an initial loan with an obligation to buy over the line just before the window shut.

Download the Chelsea News app to get all the latest Chelsea news, transfer updates and match commentary straight to your phone.

Listen to the latest Chelsea podcast for more on the Mudryk deal and what it means for the squad: