Henrikh Mkhitaryan is in London this morning as confusion reigns over his future. Earlier this week, Shakhtar Donetsk's General Director Sergey Palkin announced on Facebook that the Armenian international was expected to show up for a pre-season training camp in Austria. He later deleted that post and Mkhitaryan never appeared.
Last night, the German tabloid Bild reported that Borussia Dortmund were set to swoop for the Ukrainian league's top scorer. This same story was carried overnight by most of the Russian and Ukrainian press.
However, this morning 101greatgoals.com uploaded a photo of Mkhitaryan supposedly in a London hotel. This has been confirmed in the last hour by the hotel staff to a correspondent of the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS. The same correspondent reported that he is also set to travel to Liverpool in the very near future.
Russian media also report that a fans' protest also took place on Monday outside the Armenian Football Federation in Yerevan. It was rumoured that the reason for the delay in the transfer of Mkhitaryan to Liverpool lay in the fact that Shakhtar only owned 50% of the player, with the other 50% belonging to the president of the Armenian Football Federation, Ruben Hayrapetyan. The fans wrote in an open letter that Mkhitaryan had become "a victim of the oligarchical system of the Armenian Football Federation." Hayrapetyan has denied this.
