Chelsea Write Off Mudryk's £89m Price Tag as Tottenham Gamble on a De Zerbi Reunion

Tottenham have signed Mykhailo Mudryk on a season-long loan from Chelsea, with a £75m option to buy, reuniting the Ukrainian winger with the manager who oversaw his breakthrough at Shakhtar Donetsk, Roberto De Zerbi. It is a deal that reframes what was once a €100m superstar signing as a discounted reclamation project, agreed just before the transfer deadline for a player who has not featured competitively since 28 November 2024 The Guardian reports.

Mudryk's route back to the Premier League came only after a doping case that threatened to end his career altogether. BBC Sport confirms the loan runs until the end of the season, with Spurs holding the option to make the move permanent for £75m BBC Sport's report on the deal.

From €100m wonderkid to forgotten man: how Mudryk's Chelsea career unravelled

The Arsenal-beating deal that never delivered

Chelsea made Mudryk a €100m (£89m) player in January 2023, gazumping Arsenal for his signature in a deal comprising an initial €70m plus €30m in add-ons The Guardian's account of the original transfer. At the time he was among the most in-demand players in Europe, a 22-year-old with electric pace who had lit up the Champions League for Shakhtar.

The move never came close to justifying the fee. Mudryk struggled for consistency, drifted in and out of Chelsea's plans, and by late 2024 had fallen well down the pecking order at Stamford Bridge.

A doping ban that nearly ended his career

Mudryk's career then hit rock bottom entirely. He was suspended after returning an adverse finding for meldonium, a banned substance that can boost respiratory capacity and stamina, and was subsequently handed a four-year ban by the Football Association.

An appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport changed everything. At the end of July, Mudryk resolved his case with the FA, accepting a breach of anti-doping rules but receiving a suspension equal to time already served, clearing him for an immediate return.

The FA noted that changes had since been made to the World Anti-Doping Agency's rules on meldonium, and that had Mudryk's test been conducted under the revised thresholds, "the concentration of meldonium in the sample would not have been reported" and no adverse finding would have existed at all.

It is a striking detail: a player effectively cleared by a rulebook change rather than exonerated of the underlying finding, which leaves the door open for scrutiny even as he returns to competitive football.

The De Zerbi factor: why Spurs are betting on a Shakhtar reunion

Filling the left-wing void after Gakpo and Ndiaye setbacks

Spurs did not land Mudryk by design so much as by necessity. De Zerbi wanted a left-winger to complete a rebuilt front line alongside Sávio on the right and Omar Marmoush through the middle, both arriving from Manchester City this summer.

• Tottenham missed out on Cody Gakpo, retained by Liverpool
• They also lost out on Iliman Ndiaye, who joined City from Everton
• De Zerbi had started the season with Mathys Tel on the left before pivoting to Mudryk

ESPN reports the Mudryk deal was struck alongside a separate agreement to sign defender Tosin Adarabioyo from Chelsea, suggesting Spurs used deadline day to extract value from a rival's squad rather than moving on Mudryk in isolation ESPN's report on the double deal.

'He's my son': the personal endorsement behind the gamble

The connection between player and manager dates back to Mudryk's breakthrough 2021-22 season at Shakhtar under De Zerbi. Speaking during Spurs' pre-season tour of Australia when Mudryk's ban ended, De Zerbi made his backing unambiguous.

"He's my son. I'm very happy. He deserves to play. He's a cool guy, a top player. Hopefully he can show what he suffered in the last two years in this next season."

Mudryk's own words carried similar weight.

"It's a great feeling. I can't wait to start training and playing for the club, and I'm so excited to be reunited with Roberto De Zerbi. I'm a player who brings speed and creativity, and I want to help in both the offensive and defensive areas. I want to make the fans excited."

The fine print: loan, £75m option, and what it says about Chelsea's exit strategy

A discounted buy-back against an £89m outlay

The structure of the deal, a loan rather than an outright sale, tells its own story. Against the original €100m fee, an eventual £75m sale would still represent a significant loss for Chelsea, and that is only if Spurs choose to exercise the option at all after a season with no competitive football on the player's résumé since 2024.

ESPN's separate coverage frames the buy option at roughly $101m, the dollar equivalent of the £75m figure, underlining how far the numbers have fallen from the original nine-figure deal even before accounting for two lost years of value and form ESPN's report on the loan terms.

Part of a wider Chelsea clearout

Mudryk's exit fits a pattern of Chelsea moving on from expensive, underperforming assets rather than persisting with them. CaughtOffside notes Mudryk had drawn interest from several clubs after returning to training over the summer, with Spurs moving quickly to beat rivals to a deal CaughtOffside's report on the buy option. That competition suggests Chelsea had leverage to at least recoup a fee eventually, even if the £75m figure is a fraction of what they paid.

The deal also marks the first business between the two London clubs since 2009, when goalkeeper Carlo Cudicini moved from Stamford Bridge to Tottenham on a free transfer, a reminder of how rarely this fixture produces transfer activity.

What happens next

For Mudryk, the immediate priority is match fitness after almost two years without competitive football. De Zerbi will need to manage his integration carefully, both physically and in terms of confidence, before he can be judged as a first-team option rather than a reclamation project.

For Tottenham, the £75m option becomes the season's quiet subplot. If Mudryk rediscovers even a fraction of his Shakhtar form, Spurs have a bargain; if not, they simply return him to Chelsea having risked comparatively little.

For Chelsea, the deal closes an awkward chapter but does not erase it. The gap between the €100m spent in 2023 and the £75m ceiling now on the table will remain one of the Premier League's starkest lessons in transfer inflation, regardless of how Mudryk's Tottenham story unfolds.