Chelsea Hijack Arsenal Bid, As Mykhailo Mudryk Agrees To A 7-Year Contract Worth €110million

Chelsea have agreed a club-record deal with Shakhtar Donetsk for Mykhailo Mudryk and the winger has already verbally agreed a seven-year contract.

For months, Arsenal had appeared to be the favorite to land the highly-rated 22-year-old while the player himself was desperate to move to the Emirates, posting a string of messages about the Gunners on social media.

But on Saturday afternoon it emerged that senior Chelsea officials had flown to the continent in an effort to hijack Arsenal’s deal and have now won the race for his signature.

According to a post on Shakhtar Donetsk Twitter, the west London club held face-to-face talks with their Shakhtar counterparts and agreed on a deal worth €110million.

That is far more than Arsenal were prepared to go to, while Chelsea are also prepared to pay a larger portion of the fee up front.

The Blues will pay €70million (£62m) now, with a further €40m (£35m) in add-ons, while Mudryk himself has already given the greenlight for the deal to happen.

There had been suggestions the attacker might be holding out for Arsenal and only Arsenal, but Chelsea have blown the Gunners out of the water in negotiations for the player too.

They have offered Mudryk a much more lucrative salary and a longer contract, with the Ukrainian ready to sign a seven-year deal; Arsenal, by contrast, had only been offering a five-year contract.