Mykhailo Mudryk has made one appearance for Tottenham. One. And now he's back on the sidelines with an ankle sprain sustained in training, facing a potential absence of four to eight weeks.
The timing is as bad as it gets. Mudryk only joined Spurs on deadline day — a season-long loan from Chelsea engineered by Roberto De Zerbi, the man who first developed him at Shakhtar Donetsk. His debut came last weekend at Nottingham Forest, a 646-day wait condensed into a second-half cameo in a 0-0 draw. Then, days later, a training ground injury ended the comeback before it had a chance to breathe.
The fixtures he'll miss tell the story
Mudryk is out for at least the Everton league match, the Carabao Cup tie with Liverpool, and the subsequent Premier League encounter with Aston Villa. Depending on how the ankle responds, he could be sidelined well into April. That's a significant chunk of De Zerbi's early weeks in charge at Spurs, and a blow to a rebuild that was already working with thin margins.
De Zerbi had already flagged that Mudryk wasn't close to his best. "He's not ready yet. He's working to reach the best physical condition," the Italian said after the Forest draw. "He needs time, he needs work." The ankle injury has now made that timeline significantly less predictable.
Injury specialist Ben Dinnery had warned this kind of setback was plausible. "It is rare you have a straight line from A to B," he told the Press Association, "particularly when you're talking about a player like Mudryk who is highly explosive with dynamic movements." A player who spent 20 months away from professional football — first banned following an adverse finding for meldonium, then exonerated — was always going to need time to recalibrate. The body doesn't forget inactivity, whatever the reason for it.
A £88.5m player still searching for a return
Chelsea paid £88.5 million for Mudryk in January 2023. He has returned 10 goals in 73 appearances at Stamford Bridge — numbers that have defined the narrative around him ever since. The Spurs loan was meant to be the reset: familiar coach, clean slate, consistent minutes. Instead, he gets one substitute appearance and a sprained ankle.
Spurs' attacking depth takes a hit too. De Zerbi is now leaning heavily on Mathys Tel in that left-sided role — a player the manager himself described as taking "too many wrong decisions." The irony is that Mudryk's absence gives Tel the runway he needs, but that's cold comfort for a side still finding its identity under a new head coach.
"It could still be several games or even several months depending on how much exposure he will be afforded," Dinnery added. Right now, four to eight weeks is the working estimate. For Mudryk, whose last competitive appearance before Forest came in November 2024, the clock has reset again.
