Mykhailo Mudryk to Tottenham transfer chances: How likely is summer Chelsea loan move? Football Whispers Index score

Mykhailo Mudryk is set to make a move to north London on deadline day, with Tottenham agreeing a season-long loan from Chelsea that includes a £75m non-mandatory buy option.

The 25-year-old Ukrainian winger, cleared to return to football on 30 July after his doping ban was resolved, chose Spurs over Leeds and other suitors because he wanted to work under Roberto De Zerbi again.

Fabrizio Romano confirmed the deal on the evening of 31 August, with personal terms agreed and medicals scheduled for 1 September.

Mykhailo Mudryk to Tottenham rated ‘Very likely'

The Football Whispers Index scores every transfer rumour across five weighted factors. Read how it works here.

At 92 out of 100, this is a deal that is effectively complete, sitting in the “Very likely” band because the only remaining steps are a medical and paperwork before the window shuts at 23:00 BST tonight.

The strongest signal is the sheer weight and quality of sourcing: Romano's “here we go,” backed by BBC Sport, ESPN, Ben Jacobs, Nizaar Kinsella, talkSPORT, and The Guardian, all with distinct details rather than copies of one report.

Chelsea's willingness to let Mudryk leave on a low-cost loan, combined with the player's insistence on reuniting with De Zerbi, made this a path-of-least-resistance deal once Man City hijacked Tottenham's move for Iliman Ndiaye.

Financial viability

A paid loan for a player earning £100,000 a week is about as financially painless as a deal gets for a club of Tottenham's size, particularly one sitting 17 percentage points below the new SCR ceiling.

The real financial question sits a year down the road: whether £75m for a player Chelsea bought for £62m in January 2023, and who has since served a 20-month doping suspension, represents value if Tottenham decide to make the move permanent.

That option is non-mandatory, which means Spurs carry no obligation beyond the season's wages and loan fee, and Chelsea carry no expectation that the clause will be triggered unless Mudryk produces something exceptional.

The five years left on Mudryk's Chelsea contract give the selling club total control of the timeline: even if Spurs decline the option, Chelsea can loan him again or negotiate from a position of contractual strength.

Buying club need

This is the pillar that stops the score from climbing even higher, because the honest read is that Tottenham do not desperately need another left winger.

De Zerbi already has Savio, signed from Manchester City for £75m, as his first-choice option on the left, with Mathys Tel, Wilson Odobert, and several versatile forwards able to cover.

What happened is that Spurs wanted a specific profile for months, first pursuing Cody Gakpo from Liverpool and then agreeing a deal for Iliman Ndiaye from Everton, only for Manchester City to swoop for the Senegalese international at the last moment.

Mudryk is the deadline-day alternative rather than the first-choice target, and his early numbers, 145 minutes of pre-season action with a 37.5% dribble success rate and 0.25 xG, do not suggest he arrives as a clear statistical upgrade over Tel, who managed seven successful dribbles at a 63.6% rate across his opening Premier League fixtures.

Player motivation

The De Zerbi connection is the engine of this entire deal, and it explains why Mudryk chose Spurs over clubs where he might have been more certain of starting every week.

De Zerbi managed Mudryk at Shakhtar Donetsk during the 2021/22 season, the campaign that turned the Ukrainian from a raw prospect into a player Chelsea were willing to pay £62m for in January 2023.

After 20 months away from competitive football, Mudryk is betting that the manager who first unlocked his potential can do it again, and that carries more weight for him than the fact that he is technically moving from a higher-rated club to a lower-rated one.

The playing-time calculation is straightforward: Chelsea's wing depth under Xabi Alonso, with Cole Palmer, Pedro Neto, Morgan Rogers, Estevao Willian, Geovany Quenda, and Bynoe-Gittens all ahead of him, left Mudryk with virtually no path to regular minutes at Stamford Bridge.

Selling club incentive

Chelsea's incentive here is not about raising cash; it is about clearing a path for a player who has no future at the club under the current squad structure and giving him a chance to rebuild his value elsewhere.

Mudryk joined Chelsea for £62m in January 2023, and the return across 73 appearances, 10 goals and 11 assists before the ban, never justified the investment.

The doping suspension, served from November 2024 until the CAS resolution on 30 July 2026, added a further 20 months of inactivity to an already underwhelming spell, and Chelsea reintegrated him into pre-season training knowing a loan would follow.

From Chelsea's perspective, the £75m buy option is a clever piece of structural insurance: if De Zerbi somehow turns Mudryk into the player they thought they were buying three years ago, they can either collect £75m or welcome back a transformed asset, and if the loan produces nothing special, they have lost only a season's worth of wages for a player they were not going to use anyway.

Market momentum

There is nothing ambiguous about the sourcing on this deal: every major transfer reporter in English football has confirmed it, and the detail has been consistent across all of them.

Romano broke the full agreement on the evening of 31 August, confirming personal terms, the paid loan structure, and the existence of a buy-option clause, with Ben Jacobs subsequently confirming the £75m figure and the medical schedule.

Nizaar Kinsella, Chelsea's most reliable beat reporter, confirmed that Chelsea had accepted offers from Tottenham for both Mudryk and Tosin Adarabioyo, anchoring the story from the selling club's end.

The speed of the deal, from first credible links on 30 August to agreed terms less than 48 hours later, reflects the fact that both clubs and the player were aligned from the moment Tottenham lost Ndiaye to Manchester City.

Mykhailo Mudryk to Tottenham: Will or won't it happen?

Barring something genuinely extraordinary in the medical, Mudryk will be a Tottenham player before midnight tonight.

The bigger story starts after the announcement: whether a 25-year-old returning from 20 months out of the game can justify a place in a squad that already has Savio, Tel, Kudus, and Marmoush competing for minutes on the left side of De Zerbi's attack.

If De Zerbi can recreate the conditions that made Mudryk unplayable during that 2021/22 Shakhtar season, Chelsea will have accidentally loaned a resurgent £75m asset to a direct rival; if he cannot, the loan expires quietly in June and both clubs move on with nothing lost.