Tomorrow.
I was dreaming this morning that Erling Haaland was some kind of vampire, and I kept shooting him in the chest and he wouldn’t die. Do we have any dream experts who can break down what this means? I really can’t figure it out… *cough*…
Lost a bit (at least on the blog), in the return of football and our win over West Ham, was the news that Arsenal had made an official offer for Mykhaylo Mudryk. Our interest in the player is well-known and longstanding, but we also know that Shakhtar Donetsk values him highly. As such, the initial offer of 40 million euros + around 20 million euros in add-ons has been rejected.
We keep hearing about the fee Man Utd paid for Antony as a benchmark, but as I said earlier his stupidity shouldn’t have as big of an impact on the broader market. Perhaps PSV selling Cody Gakpo to Liverpool for around €45m could recalibrate things, but we also can’t rule out United coming back and paying a fortune for a player they thought they had. , so that could skew things again.
The thing about Mudryk is that we’ve known for some time what Shakhtar’s public price is, but obviously we feel there’s room for negotiation. As much as I would like the player, I don’t think we should pay anything like what they want. It’s too expensive, so it will be interesting to see what happens next. Will they be persuaded to accept less? It’s not like there’s a bidding war (yet), and from all we can see, the player himself is very keen to join in and let the world know that he’s interested in moving to North London.
So far, he’s done an interview with Oleksandr Zinchenko’s wife (who’s a TV presenter, not a fluke), and the other night he posted a photo on social media showing him watching our win over West Ham. When he was asked about it afterwards, Mikel Arteta was typically casual, saying:
It’s good for England that you don’t have many other matches in other countries. We are the only ones playing during Christmas so we hope a lot of people have seen our game and we gave them a good show.
I suspect part of our strategy will be Mudryk’s desire to join, which couldn’t be more obvious. So much so that I expect more samples of his intentions in the coming days.
Wednesday: Mudryk posts an Instagram Story revealing his new pup whom he has named ‘Saliba’.
Thursday: A TikTok of him shopping for a set of top-notch barbecue tongs, captioned, “I wonder who I could give them to?!”
Friday: On Snapchat we see a scene of Mudryk at home, relaxing, building a Lego version of the Emirates Stadium. “Lego, huh?!” he says, followed by winking emoji + falling to the ground laughing emoji + innocent halo emoji + hashtag #letmego
Saturday: Mudryk shows up to training wearing an Arsenal FC ‘Passion – Clarity – Energy’ shirt.
Domingo: legally changes his name to Mykhaylo Dennis Patrick Thierry Raymond Gabriel Highbury Andre-Santos Mudryk.
Monday: Reveals a new tattoo on the other side of his ‘Only Jesus’ neck etching, reading: “I believe in Eddie.”
The possibilities are endless. Whether that will have any impact on Shakhtar’s stance will have to wait and see. Seriously though, there needs to be some confidence from Arsenal that a deal can be done, but it looks like this could last for a while. Which adds another layer to things because we know the coach wants a reinforcement ASAP, and there are some tough games coming up in January.
Keeping serious, Mudryk’s arrival addresses another key issue: depth. I’m not as worried about Eddie Nketiah’s ability to score goals as some, but what worries me is that he is the only center forward we have. Signing a winger doesn’t directly fix that problem, but having someone else to play on the left would allow us to use Gabriel Martinelli as a center forward if necessary. It’s really the only internal solution we have available at the moment, but a bump or a suspension for Eddie and we too are stretched to the left, especially with Emile Smith Rowe yet to return to action. Let’s see how quickly we can find an agreement with Shakhtar.
Regardless, there’s plenty of discussion about Mudryk, Nketiah and what we could do on the transfer market in the latest Arsecast Extra available below. If there is something interesting, we will cover it in Arseblog News.
Tuesday: Mudryk drops his new single, a mix of North London Forever and So Paddy Got Up. It hits #1 in seconds as Arsenal Twitter does its thing.
