Suspended Chelsea winger Mykhailo Mudryk is in line for a surprise return to action next month after not featuring for over a year, according to reports.

Mykhailo Mudryk banned for positive drugs test

Mudryk’s absence from Chelsea’s first-team setup has now exceeded twelve months, with the Ukrainian international last appearing competitively on November 28 last year before his career ground to a dramatic halt.

The 24-year-old tested positive for meldonium, a performance-enhancing substance prohibited under anti-doping regulations.

Following confirmation of his B sample analysis in June, the FA formally charged Mudryk, leaving him facing a potential ban ranging between two and four years if found guilty.

Throughout the ordeal, Mudryk has maintained complete innocence, and even voluntarily undertook a lie detector test which supported his version of events.

Ukrainian sports journalists have theorised that contaminated stem cell treatment administered during international duty may explain the adverse finding, suggesting the injection originated from cattle previously exposed to meldonium.

Chelsea sanctioned the record £88.5 million transfer from Shakhtar in January 2023, initially viewing him as a transformative attacking signing after hijacking Arsenal’s deal.

However, his Stamford Bridge career proved underwhelming even before the suspension materialised, with inconsistent performances failing to justify the enormous investment.

The club reassigned his prestigious number ten shirt to Cole Palmer following Mudryk’s suspension, signalling their acceptance of a prolonged absence.

Chelsea also reinforced their attacking options by striking deals for Alejandro Garnacho and Jamie Gittens in the summer, further blocking any potential pathway back into Enzo Maresca’s plans.

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Reports have suggested that, once Mudryk is eligible to play again, Chelsea could allow the forward to join sister club Strasbourg on loan in a bid to reignite his career.

Mykhailo Mudryk in line for January return as Sevilla eye Chelsea loan deal

Now, according to journalist JM Villalba and Canal Sur Radio, that eligibility could be as early as next month.

Speaking to the Spanish broadcaster, Villalba has reported that Mudryk will be able to play again after January 17, and this has piqued interest from La Liga side Sevilla.

The club are considering a deal for Mudryk once he comes back midway through next month, which is a surprise when factoring in how very little we’ve heard about the winger’s return timeline.

If Mudryk is indeed eligible for a January renaissance, BlueCo should certainly green-light a temporary move away for him.

He quite simply needs game time and renewed confidence following the lengthy layoff, controversy and serious drop down Maresca’s pecking order, with the Spanish top flight potentially providing that needed reintroduction to competitive action.

That being said, it should be a dry loan with no option or obligation to buy, with Chelsea poised to make a key decision about Mudryk’s long-term future.

He still has six years remaining on his current contract, giving the Blues plenty of time to do so.

The two bowlers picked up four wickets apiece and Taijul also completed 250 Test wickets

Mohammad Isam23-Nov-2025Hasan Murad broke through Ireland’s resistance on the fifth day in an improbable chase of 509 to complete Bangladesh’s 217-run win in the second Test in Dhaka. Curtis Campher remained unbeaten on 71 from 259 balls for an effort that lasted more than six hours. Gavin Hoey and Campher survived for more than 31 overs, before Murad removed both Hoey and No. 11 Matthew Humphreys in consecutive balls to complete Bangladesh’s 2-0 win.Murad and Taijul Islam finished with four wickets each, but Mushfiqur Rahim’s century in his 100th Test was the highlight of the match. Taijul also completed 250 Test wickets, becoming the sixth left-arm spinner to reach the mark. He had earlier gone past Shakib Al Hasan’s 246 wickets to become Bangladesh’s highest wicket-taker.Campher and Hoey batted with remarkable composure on the fifth morning, as Bangladesh’s frustration grew after lunch with only two wickets left for victory. The pair ensured that Ireland batted 59.3 overs on the last day, despite there being a few close calls.Ireland started the day on 176 for 6 and Campher offered the full face of the bat while his overnight batting partner Andy McBrine survived for almost an hour before he was trapped lbw by Taijul for 21 to become his 250th Test wicket. Jordan Neill started off with a string of boundaries off Taijul, using the square cut and cover drives, before launching him down the ground. Neill’s only six came off Murad, though he also survived a dropped chance by Litton, on 23. It was Mehidy Hasan Miraz who got one to spin past Neill’s forward prod, which snuck through to hit the stumps soon after the second new ball was taken. Campher got to his fifty with a straight six that sailed over the long-on boundary.Campher and Hoey then took Ireland to lunch on 263 for 8 with a stand that crossed 50 in the second session, barely scoring at two runs an over. Even as Campher continued to resist, it took Murad just two balls in the end to seal the game.

Deepti Sharma, Megan Schutt and Marizanne Kapp have bowling landmarks within their sights

Namooh Shah29-Sep-20251 – Bates is 257 runs away from becoming the leading run-scorer in women’s international cricket. Bates (10,612) is currently second in the list after Mithali Raj (who finished with 10,868 runs).Bates is also just 104 runs away from reaching 6000 ODI runs. If she does so, she will only be the second after Raj (7805) to reach the landmark.Related

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112 – Runs required by Mandhana to complete 5000 ODI runs. She will be the second India batter after Raj and fifth overall in women’s ODIs to reach the milestone. Mandhana will also be the fastest by innings if she manages to reach the milestone in this tournament.323 – Runs required for Bates to surpass Debbie Hockley’s tally of 1501 in the women’s ODI World Cup and become the leading run-scorer in the tournament.1000 – Mandhana is 72 away from becoming the first to score 1000 runs in a calendar year in women’s ODIs. The record is held by Belinda Clark, who scored 970 runs in 1997.Suzie Bates is eyeing a number of records in the women’s World Cup•Getty Images1 – Bates will be playing her 350th international at her second match of the tournament. That will make her the first player to get to 350 international caps in women’s cricket.3 – Marizanne Kapp is 12 away from becoming the third-highest wicket-taker in women’s ODIs, having taken 169 wickets before the start of the tournament. Kapp will surpass Cathryn Fitzpatrick and Anisa Mohammed, who finished their career at 180 ODI wickets. Jhulan Goswami, with 255 wickets, heads the ODI list, while Shabnim Ismail is second on the list with 191.150 – Schutt and Deepti have 140 wickets in women’s ODIs and need ten more to get to the 150 mark.Schutt, on 34 wickets, can also become the leading wicket-taker at women’s ODI World Cups if she picks up ten more wickets. That will take her tally past Goswami’s 43. Kapp, with 32 wickets, also has a chance to overhaul Goswami’s tally.ESPNcricinfo Ltd1 – Mandhana, currently with 16 international hundreds, needs two more to become the most prolific century-scorer in women’s international cricket. Meg Lanning with 17 is currently at the top.3 – Both Mandhana and Bates are three away from topping the list for most hundreds in women’s ODIs where Lanning sits at the top with 15.198 – Runs Pratika Rawal needs to complete 1000 runs in women’s ODIs. She has a chance to become the fastest to reach the milestone if she does it in the next five innings.

Everton are now ready to pounce to sign an “insane” Premier League striker in the January transfer window, and his club are open to offers.

Toffees' January transfer window plans taking shape

The Toffees are flying high in the Premier League, moving up to seventh place after winning four of their last five matches, but one position in which they arguably need to strengthen next month is centre-forward, considering they have scored just 18 goals this season.

No side above 17th place has scored fewer goals than David Moyes’ side, although they were impressive going forward in the last match, breezing past Nottingham Forest with a 3-0 victory at the Hill Dickinson Stadium.

Thierno Barry scored the second goal in the rout, with the Frenchman finally managing to get off the mark, having failed to score in his previous 14 outings for the Merseyside club.

Beto hasn’t fared any better, however, with the 27-year-old also on just one Premier League goal, which will be a worry for Moyes, given that we are now approaching the half-way stage of the season.

Consequently, Everton are now looking at bringing in a new striker next month, according to a report from TEAMtalk, which states they are ready to pounce to sign Joshua Zirkzee, should Manchester United be willing to lower their £35m asking price.

The Toffees are joined by three other Premier League clubs in the race for Zirkzee’s signature, but AS Roma are currently in pole position, and the Serie A side have recently opened direct negotiations over a January deal.

Man United are now open to offers for the Dutchman, who is the Red Devils’ second choice striker behind Benjamin Sesko, and he has struggled for game time, starting only three Premier League games this term.

"Insane" Zirkzee would be risky signing for Everton

Moyes will be hoping Barry scoring against Forest can be a turning point for the 23-year-old, but the early signs haven’t exactly been encouraging, so a new striker may be required if the Merseysiders are to make a serious push for Europe.

There are some indications Zirkzee could be a solid replacement, having been lauded for his “insane” quality by scout Ben Mattinson, while also scoring a very well-taken goal in United’s recent 2-1 triumph against Crystal Palace.

Much like Barry and Beto, however, the Netherlands international has struggled to find the back of the net on a regular basis this season, having scored just one goal in the Premier League, following up a debut campaign in which he scored three.

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As such, with Everton in a strong position to make a real success out of this season, should they get their January recruitment right, they should look to bring in a striker who is much more prolific in front of goal.

Brendon McCullum, England’s head coach, said that his beaten players would double down on their team unity after a chastening loss in the first Test at Perth, and vowed to block out the outside noise after what he acknowledged was “a very bad day”.Speaking to TNT Sports after Travis Head’s 69-ball century had condemned England to a crushing eight-wicket defeat inside two days, McCullum revealed he had been confident of his team’s chances of defending a slender total of 205, on a pitch that had offered pace and movement throughout, and on which Australia had been rolled aside for 132 in their first innings.Instead, Head came out swinging as a stand-in opener for the injured Usman Khawaja, and succeeded in knocking England off the aggressive lengths that had worked so well for their five-pronged pace attack on the opening day.”I thought 200 was actually a pretty good score for us to try and defend in the last innings,” McCullum said. “But the way Travis Head played was absolutely outstanding. It’s one of the best knocks I’ve seen in a pressure situation on a tough wicket.”I spoke to Gilly [former Australia wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist] about five minutes before their last innings, and he said, ‘I think you guys have got 30 too many’. I said, ‘I hope so’, but we might have needed another 230 the way that Travis played.”Fair play. We’ve always said that if someone’s able to stand up to what we throw at them, and be able to put us under pressure and deliver a performance such as that, then you have to tip your cap.”Head had been trapped on the back foot throughout a tentative first innings, scoring 21 from 35 balls from No. 5, before falling to a loose pull to mid-on off Ben Stokes. This time, however, he took the offensive option with 16 fours and four sixes, and grew in aggression throughout a first-wicket stand of 75 with the debutant Jake Weatherald, before adding 117 more with Marnus Labuschagne.With doubts about Khawaja’s fitness after a back spasm, and with Australia’s top-order in a state of flux coming into the series, Head may have made the role his own for the rest of the series – just as he did in powering Australia to ODI World Cup glory two years ago.”We will look at how we can control things better if that confronts us again,” McCullum said. “But at the same time, you’ve got to just acknowledge how special that knock was, particularly out of batting position as well. I thought was a brave call from the Australian coaches and from Travis Head as well, to put himself up the order.”Ironically, despite the extent of England’s own batting failings at Perth, with all 20 of their wickets falling in just 67.3 overs across the two days, Head’s success has encouraged McCullum to double down on their own policy of going hard at Australia’s bowlers.”Clearly, they wanted to try and make that ball as soft as what they could, as quickly as they could,” he said. “You do that through two ways. Right? You either do it through absorbing pressure and letting them all go through to the keeper, or you try and do what Travis he did, and batter it to all parts and make teams go away from their lengths. And he was superb.”As everyone knows, that’s the style of play that we try and replicate as well, to try and put opposition teams under pressure and take them away from bowling the most dangerous length. It doesn’t always work. And there were times today, with bat in hand, where we tried to do that, and it didn’t work. But the way that Travis Head played, he took the game away from us.”Case in point was the performance of Scott Boland, who bounced back from his rough first-innings figures of 10-0-62-0 to deliver the decisive spell of the day, immediately after lunch, as England lost 4 for 11 in 19 balls. Both of their set batters, Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope fell in consecutive overs after getting bogged down by Boland’s accuracy, and when Harry Brook and Joe Root tried to take the aggressive option before they had the measure of the conditions, they too both fell cheaply.Related

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“Boland bowled exceptionally well,” McCullum said. “He hit the deck hard, his paces were up as well, particularly after I felt we were on top of him a little bit in the first innings. The way he came back was a really pivotal moment. We were 100 in front, one-down, there was a time for us to be able to try and manoeuvre the game more into our favour and start to build the lead.”But in the end, we got out. We nicked out a couple of wider balls, and some of our high-quality players, who are free-wheeling types of cricketers, weren’t quite able to put pressure back on the opposition. We found ourselves in a bit of a collapse, and that’s something we’ll have to look at.”But I never want us to go away from our style. That is our best opportunity to try and put opposition teams under pressure. Yes, there’s times where we have to throttle down, and times where we can power up, but the basic principle of how we try and operate as a team is to try and exert some pressure back on the opposition.”The magnitude and manner of the defeat means that the reaction in the local media, and from the fans – both English and Australian – is likely to be off the scale in the coming days, especially given some of the headlines that contributed to the pre-series phoney war.McCullum, however, backed the culture of the dressing-room to withstand the worst of the criticism, much as has been the case throughout the ups and downs of his three-and-a-half-year tenure.”We’ve been trying to insulate against reacting to things too much for a little while,” he said. “We know that this one’s going to hurt, and it’s going to hurt not just us, but all the English people that follow this cricket team as well.”There’ll be a lot of a lot of chatter. For us, it’s a matter of making sure that we don’t allow our confidence and our camaraderie to dip too low. We know that at our best, we’re a very good cricket team. We have now got an extended amount of time off over the next 10 to 12 days to make sure that when we get to Brisbane, we bounce back.”One of my big beliefs is you got to build that unity, that cohesion, the connectivity and that camaraderie within a team for when you are under the biggest pressure, and the brightest lights, and things haven’t worked out accordingly. To me, there is no other way other than to stay together, and keep backing one another, and keep heading towards the target.”This is a marathon, not a sprint. We’ve had a very bad day today, but we’ve done it before. That’s our blueprint. We’re married to that, and we won’t back down from that over the next four Tests.”

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