Chelsea have agreed a fee of £90 million for Arsenal target Mykhailo Mudryk.
Chelsea Transfer News:
The Premier League leaders have made three official bids to sign Mudryk, but they have been unable to strike a deal with Shakhtar Donetsk.
The 22-year-old is now up for grabs, and the Blues are willing to pay £62 million up front and £28 million in add-ons to do it. Shakhtar accepted the offer on Saturday.
Arsenal is still in talks with Shakhtar because they believe Mudryk would prefer to join them.
Shakhtar, however, played with Arsenal supporters on Saturday by hinting towards an announcement.
Chelsea agrees to a £90 million deal to sabotage Arsenal’s pursuit of Mykhailo Mudryk after Shakhtar Donetsk teased the Player of the Year announcement to prank Gunners fans.
“We prepared some news for you today,” the Ukrainian Premier League side tweeted on Saturday morning, along with a pair of eye emojis.
Then, after an hour, they posted again, saying: “Seems like it’s time to reveal the first piece…”
Shakhtar then tweeted their list of upcoming Turkey training camp fixtures.
With Gunners fans eyes still glued to their Twitter feed, they wrote: “There are more interesting things coming up. We are ready to share another piece of news as soon as our page reaches 51 thousand subscribers”, followed by “Mudryk?” with a thinking face emoji.
Arsenal fans were let down after keeping the internet on edge for another 25 minutes in the belief that they would announce his exit for north London.
Shakhtar took advantage of the opportunity to declare Mudryk as their Player of the Year rather than making the inference that he was leaving the team.
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Four pieces featuring their star man were then published after that, along with an interview.
The teasing helped Shakhtar gain 4,400 followers on Twitter when they started luring Arsenal fans to follow their feed.
On Friday, Arsenal offered Mudryk a third offer totaling about £80 million, made up of about £62 million and an additional £18 million.
Additionally, after hearing about the proposal, the player posted a praying emoji in an Instagram story that was later deleted.
Also, Mikel Arteta has said that he is aware of Mudryk’s previous social media tweets in which he has expressed a desire to join the Gunners.
It is rumored that the upfront payment is where negotiations between Arsenal and Shakhtar have stalled.
In the early going of the January transfer window, Arsenal, who takes on Tottenham in the north London derby on Sunday, have yet to add any players.
