How Mason Mount’s Chelsea form has deserted him at the worst possible time
https://theathletic.com/4236782/2023/02/22/mount-Chelsea-contract-form-potter/
When it comes to contract negotiations, timing can be everything.
Mason Mount’s future at Chelsea appears to hang in the balance. As The Athletic revealed earlier this week, talks over an extension are on hold for the rest of the season while the club concentrate on improving their form in the Premier League and Champions League.
Should nothing be agreed in the summer, Chelsea will look to sell the England international because he will have just 12 months left on his current deal and the owners will not countenance losing him for free the following year. The Todd Boehly-Clearlake consortium struggled to fathom how the previous regime had permitted Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen, both international defenders, to wind down their contracts and depart as free agents. They are determined that their club will never be left so vulnerable.
Given he is an academy product, Mount’s sale will count as pure profit on the club’s books and help Chelsea comply with financial fair play in the wake of a transfer spend in excess of £500million ($605m) over the past two windows.
Before the Boehly-Clearlake takeover was completed, The Athletic reported how Mount was attracting interest from three top clubs in England as well as others from abroad. They were not named at the time, but his English admirers are Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City, while Juventus are one of his suitors in Europe. The suggestion he might not agree a new contract and leave was met with outcry back then. Yet, almost 10 months on, it remains very much a possibility.
That same story explained how Reece James was in a similar situation at the time, only for the owners to renegotiate fresh terms and, in September, confirm the England full-back as the highest-paid defender in the club’s history.
Despite several meetings since last June, there has been no such resolution with Mount.
As head coach Graham Potter admitted last week, the midfielder’s situation is complicated.
Much has been made of what Mount is demanding and, while suggestions he has asked for £300,000 a week are wide of the mark, he has rejected offers made by the club. Yet it is too simplistic to say the weekly wage is behind the impasse. There are other things at stake, from image rights to bonuses and the length of contract. Mount is reluctant to sign a deal that stretches beyond five years. The owners want him to commit to six to eight years, following the lead of James, Trevoh Chalobah, Armando Broja and several of the club’s recent signings.
There is still time for a breakthrough. This, after all, is a negotiation. But Mount’s bargaining position is not as strong as he would have hoped given the 24-year-old has lurched into his worst stretch of form since breaking through into the senior set-up in 2019-20.
In terms of the simple statistic of goals and assists, Mount’s numbers are down.
In 2019-20, he registered eight goals and six assists in 53 appearances across all competitions, or one goal involvement every 3.79 games. The following season it went up to nine goals and nine assists in 54 appearances — a goal involvement every three games. The last campaign was his best yet with 13 goals and 16 assists in 53 appearances, an extremely impressive goal involvement of one in every 1.83 matches. So far this term, however, his downturn has seen only three goals and six assists (one goal involvement every 3.44 games). Unless he musters a strong run-in, he is on course to register his fewest amount of goals in a season for Chelsea.
The slump is reflected in other metrics. Consider expected goals (xG), expected assists (xA) and shot-creating actions — which FBref explains as the “two offensive actions directly leading to a shot, such as passes, take-ons and drawing fouls” — per 90 minutes in the Premier League and 2022-23 ranks as his lowest on every category:
Compare, too, how he fares with his team-mates who play in advanced positions, whether that be in attacking midfield or further forward. It should be noted that some of the players in the chart below, comprised from Premier League and Champions League minutes, have been on the pitch a lot less than Mount so their figures could be considered a little distorted. Nevertheless, Mount’s xG per 90 minutes ranks him bottom. He’s averaging a career-low of 1.8 shots per 90 minutes this season, the first time he has dropped below two shots per 90 in a Chelsea shirt.
Such evidence will only strengthen the resolve of those who do not rate Mount highly and believe the club should take this opportunity to sell him on. But it would be wrong to judge Mount’s ability based entirely on the last six months, ignoring everything he delivered over the preceding three years. Last season he ranked eighth in the Premier League for shot-creating actions per 90 minutes, even sitting above Manchester United’s Bruno Fernandes.
Chelsea fans have voted him their Player of the Season the past two years and those who attended the 1-0 defeat at home to Southampton showed their appreciation beforehand by unfurling a huge banner in his honour, “Mason Mount The Boy Who Had A Dream”, across the Matthew Harding stand. Sanctioning the sale of such a popular figure with match-going fans would represent quite the call by the hierarchy.
With so much recent upheaval within the squad, the presence of someone who has been at Stamford Bridge since his youth and can transmit what is expected at the club to the raft of new players is to be valued. There is a possibility veteran captain Cesar Azpilicueta will leave this summer, maintaining the exodus of the group that claimed the Champions League in 2021. Thiago Silva is staying for another year but, at 38, the clock is ticking on his time at the club.
That will leave James with some burden to carry for the long term if Mount is not alongside him in the dressing room.
There is no denying Mount’s displays and metrics have disappointed this season, but who in this Chelsea team has been playing well on a consistent basis? Silva has maintained a very high level, but few others can say the same. How much responsibility does Potter have to bear? Mount excelled under previous coaches Frank Lampard and Thomas Tuchel — and Potter currently has the lowest winning percentage of any Chelsea head coach for 30 years.
Mount’s lack of attacking output can also be explained by the fact that Potter has been playing him deeper more often.
The diagram below shows Mount’s share of minutes per position in 2021-22, when Tuchel was at the helm; 78 per cent of his time on the pitch was spent in an attacking-midfield role:
That figure drops to 48 per cent for this season, where he is being used more in a central-midfield berth, further away from the final third. Six of his 22 Premier League appearances this term came under Tuchel, but this should serve as another pointer as to why his attacking metrics have deteriorated:
Potter actually asked Mount to play in a role on the left against Southampton, but he was horribly peripheral. According to FBref, he managed only 20 touches in his 63 minutes on the pitch, completing only six of his 12 passes en route. It was arguably his least-effective performance yet.
The numbers do not take into account how Chelsea have been devoid of a settled team this season and it will inevitably take a while to build an understanding with new players. Enzo Fernandez, Mykhailo Mudryk, Noni Madueke, Benoit Badiashile, David Datro Fofana and loanee Joao Felix only joined last month.
The drop may also be born of fatigue after a cluttered schedule that has stretched for years, with limited breaks in between campaigns. His time with England took him to the European Championship in 2021 and the World Cup in 2022. Mount has played 227 times since the start of 2019-20.
But he would only be human if the uncertainty over his future is affecting him mentally too.
Naturally, his critics will argue this is a situation all of his own making. He should simply sign up and concentrate on delivering out on the turf. But, even if a player has great affection for a club, he is entitled to negotiate the best possible terms. Achieving that at a time when Chelsea’s new owners are determined to lower the wage bill and want players to agree to incentivised contracts, where their salary increases if they achieve certain targets like qualifying for the Champions League, is a further complication. Mount’s timing may be out.
Positive discussions were held in November and there was optimism on both sides that talks would reach a positive conclusion in the new year. Where previous discussions had been held with Boehly and fellow co-owner Behdad Eghbali, Chelsea’s new structure has seen recent talks fall under the remit of others. For example, co-sporting director Paul Winstanley has also met with Mount’s representatives.
The hope remains that some kind of agreement can eventually be struck and that a complex situation can be resolved favourably for player and club. In the shorter term, both Chelsea and Mount will benefit most from seeing him back to his best on the pitch.
