Cited as one of two players – along with Rasmus Hojlund – by the Manchester United hierarchy as an example of the untapped potential that grants the club space to end the damaging and costly cycle of mass overhauls, Mason Mount has everything to prove having done nothing of note since his £55m move from Chelsea.
He’s started just two games for United in an injury-hit start to his second campaign after an injury-hit first. But things could not have gone better for Mount off the pitch this season.
The manager who had no plan for him has been sacked and replaced by someone whose formation matches that of the manager under whom he took his game to another level at Chelsea, who is now the manager of his national team. Seriously, it’s like he dreamt it.
Thomas Tuchel described Mount as “the whole package” in their run to win the Champions League together at Chelsea, as the Cobham graduate operated as one of two No.10s behind a central striker. He scored away at Porto in the quarter-final, at home against Real Madrid in the semi and provided the brilliant assist for Kai Havertz in the final against Manchester City.
It was his displays in that campaign and in the Premier League the following season – when he got 11 goals and 10 assists – that cemented his place in the England team and ultimately earned him what has thus far felt like a strange move to Manchester United.
Erik ten Hag bought Mount with a view to playing him in midfield with Bruno Fernandes and very quickly realised that Casemiro wasn’t up to what was a fanciful expectation for him to do the defensive work of three men in the middle. Mount wasn’t about to surpass the United captain as the No.10 and creator-in-chief, which meant it was the wing or – as turned out to be the case more often than not even when fit – nothing.
But while the majority of the United squad look set for a steep learning curve under Amorim and his 3-4-3, for Mount it will feel like slipping into a warm bath, with the inverted winger role he embraced under Tuchel at Chelsea ready and waiting for him to slot into as a round peg amid squares.
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Pedro Goncalves, who claimed 81 goals and 57 assists in 190 appearances for Sporting under Amorim, has been described by Manchester United transfer-peddlers as The Next Bruno Fernandes because he’s Portuguese, plays for Sporting and – let’s face it – clicks for laughs at him being described, far more accurately, as The Next Mason Mount would not reap the same rewards from the advertisers.
Amorim wants sporting director Dan Ashworth to look for “players with intensity” in the January transfer window, but the United boss is presumably aware given his limited budget that he will have to squeeze the majority of that increase in energy from players in the current squad, which will be music to Mount’s ears.
If Mount is anything as a footballer, he’s intense. As Tuchel said: “He’s the guy who recovers fast.”
Doubts that Amorim will hold over the capability or willingness of Marcus Rashford, Alejandro Garnacho and the other struggling forwards under Ten Hag to win back the ball in favourable positions high up the pitch and still track back and do their work defensively will soon disappear with Mount, who can’t help himself. The relentlessness is hardwired.
What Amorim will be concerned about is whether Mount can bring as much to United with the ball as his other options, but assuming his primary aim is to change the style of the team to one which strangles and gets in the faces of the opposition, Mount provides an easy fix. And he’s far from the one-dimensional try-hard footballer his critics typically suggest he is despite significant evidence to the contrary in his time as Chelsea’s best and most creative forward.
Tuchel knows and loves what Mount provides more than perhaps anyone and while the mere suggestion that there could be a place for him in the England squad at the World Cup in 2026 will be met with mass scoffing and mirth right now given the absurdly talented No.10s he would have to beat to a place, it will be hard for the England manager to ignore a mainstay for Manchester United, which now Amorim’s at the wheel, Mount has every chance of becoming.
