It would be easy for Mykhailo Mudryk to have a sense of regret as he prepares to play at the Emirates Stadium for the first time. The winger could very easily have called this ground home had things in January have gone differently.
He would have been playing as part of a free-scoring, confident Arsenal attack. Eased into the spotlight with in-form forwards to take the pressure off him, allowed to enjoy the freedom of a positive squad environment. As it happens, he prepares to take on Mikel Arteta's side wearing Chelsea blue.
After flirting with the prospect of joining Mikel Arteta's juggernaut for most of the winter, the Blues snuck in to beat their London rivals to his signature with a dramatic piece of business. The Ukrainian, despite flashes of promise, is yet to sparkle the way he did in Europe before the World Cup, though.
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Whereas Mudryk was one of eight players signed into an unsettled, lacking in confidence and incoherent squad, Arsenal went on to buy Leandro Trossard from Brighton for £27m and have seen more immediate results from the 28-year-old. Despite this, Frank Lampard has leapt to the defence of his player, keen to protect his winger.
"Every game is an opportunity for young players that have come here, and we also shouldn’t expect too much of players that have just got here," he said. "Maybe that is part of the story this year of young players coming in and, because of the performance of the team, being expected to make a difference."
Chelsea added seven players aged 22 or under to their squad in January alone, giving debuts to five of those already. Mudryk was one of the most high-profile additions but is yet to open his goalscoring account for the club.
Playing in an new country, entering a different league, not speaking English and coming back from an effective winter break, the 22-year-old has only been able to show glimpses of his talent. His struggles are part of a wider issue within the squad, recruitment and expectations too, according to Lampard.
"In an ideal world, a club the level of Chelsea, you want to bring in those players with stability and performances and results where they can find their time, look at other players playing in front of them and realise what the standards are to get into the team.
"We can't expect the individuals to find that, so from my point of view because I’ve got experience as a player, because I’ve got experience as a coach, all I want from the players is respect in working with us, listening to us, myself and the staff, because we do care.
"We care a lot about the players, even if it’s just interim we are certainly not a group of staff that are putting our feet up and going: ‘We haven’t got much, let’s just wait and get paid for our holidays’. We are actually all Chelsea people in there. They are actually trying to make this as positive an experience for everybody as possible.
"There are things that maybe don’t get seen behind the scenes that don’t relate straight onto the pitch because we are hoping Mudryk will be a great player for this club over the years. In this short period it might be flashes of that you see but he will have a lot to learn about the game which is very, very normal for developing players of course."
The same could so far be said for Enzo Fernandez, Noni Madueke and Benoit Badiashile, all of whom came in with high promise but haven't managed to turn that into results on the pitch yet. The attention will be on the electric Mudryk come kick-off, though.
He has so-far found himself in and out of the side under both Lampard and Graham Potter, something partly down to the sheer size of the squad, but showed his dangerous qualities from the bench against Brentford. For all his flair, Mudryk has come in for criticism for being raw and ill-disciplined out of possession.
"With wingers, you feel, do they know the role of the winger defensively or do they need time to learn that role defensively," Lampard explained. "If you don’t [make decisions that way], then you might not win football matches.
"I take those decisions on more footballing attributes than the motivational one. In a way, I expect everyone to be motivated here and I expect that to be the case.”
Lampard will now have to pick a team that he thinks is capable of not only shutting down a wounded Arsenal side but also attacking them at the same time. It's a role that may well be suited to Mudryk.
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