How much Arsenal will pay up-front to sign Mykhailo Mudryk, agreement now very close

By Sam Preston

Part of the delay over an agreement over Arsenal signing Mykhailo Mudryk is how much they will pay up-front for the winger.

The Telegraph report that an accord is very close and the Gunners will pay more than £50 million initially to Shakhtar Donetsk.

The report claims that he could end up being worth £75 million to £80 million, including all add-ons, if Arsenal manager to end this transfer saga.

Shakhtar want these add-ons to be as achievable as possible, and work is ongoing over the final details and structure of the fee.

Arsenal negotiating how much they will pay up-front for Mudryk

That basically means how much is paid and how much is to come later, and what conditions those additional payments are based on.

Shakhtar have publicly valued Mudryk at close to £90 million, but it never realistically looked like Arsenal would go to that number.

And they must have had confidence that they could engineer a lower cost deal, also structured more to their liking – although of course far from cheap.

Mudryk is a young talented player who Arsenal clearly feel can be a real asset to the club for years to come, and fits into their idea of Mikel Arteta developing young hungry starlets.

But they will also need him to contribute now, and the negotiations over the fee mean he was not there to come off the bench against Newcastle earlier this month when Arsenal needed variety off the bench.

It also seems incredibly likely he will miss the north London derby unless something happens absolutely rapidly, and that is the cost of negotiating this hard.

But in the long term, Arsenal will hope that the deal proves to be value for money, and it seems that the two sides are getting closer and closer, although no agreement has been reached yet.