Arsenal agree personal terms with Mykhailo Mudryk, tables improved bid to club
Mudryk prefers playing on the left wing, as he showed against Scotland in the World Cup play-offs, but he could also operate on the right of Arteta’s front three.
Arsenal have stepped up their pursuit of Mykhailo Mudryk by making an improved offer to Shakhtar Donetsk.
The club had an initial bid of £55 million for Mudryk rejected last week but have made a new exploratory offer for the Ukraine winger that is still below the £85 million fee that Shakhtar are asking for.
Arsenal, who hold a seven-point lead at the top of the Premier League, have agreed personal terms on a five-year deal with Mudryk. The 21-year-old has scored three times in the Champions League this season and found the net seven times in his past eight league appearances.
Mikel Arteta has been given assurances that he will have money to spend this month and the Arsenal manager wants to add a winger, a central midfielder and a left-sided centre back to his squad by the start of next season.
Mudryk has tried to publicly apply pressure on the clubs to agree a deal before Shakhtar meet up for their training camp next week in preparation for the resumption of the Ukrainian top flight. He has posted pictures on social media of him watching Arsenal’s past two matches, describing Arteta as a “top coach”.
On Saturday, Mudryk shared a highlights reel of his performances with a song featuring the lyric “still gotta see the Gunners win Premier League”.
Shakhtar have accepted that they will have to sell Mudryk if the price is right, despite him having a contract until 2026.
Their valuation has been based on the amount spent on players such as Jack Grealish, who cost £100 million when he joined Manchester City from Aston Villa in 2021, and Antony, who Manchester United bought for an initial £81 million from Ajax last summer.
Mudryk prefers playing on the left wing, as he showed against Scotland in the World Cup play-offs, but he could also operate on the right of Arteta’s front three.
He was an academy player at Metalist Kharkiv and Dnipro before joining Shakhtar in 2016 and moving into the senior team in 2018. Brentford were ready to spend £25 million on Mudryk last summer but Shakhtar had no intention of allowing him to leave for that.
