Mount’s rise to Chelsea is no fluke, as Tuchel sees what Lampard did to the midfielder

In some quarters, it was feared that Mason Mount’s fledgling career would stall when Thomas Tuchel replaced Frank Lampard as Chelsea manager in late January. After all, Lampard was partially fired for the poor form of several major attacks, the lion’s share of their £ 220 million outlay last summer.

Tuchel’s ability to speak German has been seen as a vital asset in improving the fortunes of Timo Werner and Kai Havertz, who is only now showing signs of establishing himself as an influential player after a difficult first season in England. Mount was made captain for Lampard’s last game in charge, but he was dropped for Tuchel’s first game, a perfect distillation from the challenge the 22-year-old had to prove himself. His rise was affected in part by the club’s transfer ban, but prior to his departure, Lampard was keen to promote the youth, despite Chelsea managers ignoring the club’s graduates for years.

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Still, Mount will make his 100th appearance for the Blues in the coming weeks – possibly as early as May 1 – after becoming as important to Tuchel as he is to Lampard.

Chelsea reached the Champions League semi-finals on Tuesday with a 2-1 aggregate win over Porto, despite losing the return leg 1-0 to an impressive last-minute volley from Mehdi Taremi. Their path was finally secured by last week’s 2-0 victory in the first leg in which Mount scored his first European goal, a smart turn and finish with notable recent improvements to his potential. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lampard never doubted Mount’s upward trajectory would continue.

“The moment I gave him the bracelet, I could see on his face what it meant to him,” Lampard said during a Q&A session ahead of this month’s London Football Awards. “That’s what you get when you bring in academy players, and fans love it. But academy players who’ve been around for eight years are fighting their way into the team with absolute desire, it means so much to them. That’s tangible. important, you won’t always see it at 8pm [years old]

“They may have dips in confidence, they may have moments in games, but when you have players who care, it doesn’t matter who the manager is. The desire they have because they work so hard and have that talent,” he said. will carry them through. So when I left Chelsea – and this is no disdain for the manager now because he’s clearly doing a fantastic job – but the manager would come in and I would put my house on it in two or three weeks. ‘Wow, Mason Mount, trains like a champ every day, works on the ball and sets the press, is high quality, improving all the time and now adding goals to his game this year.’ ”

Mount has played 53 games for club and country this season and is therefore comfortably on track to surpass last season’s number of 59. He has started England’s last eight games and was the only player to start all three England World Cup qualifiers against San Marino. , Albania and Poland last month, with manager Gareth Southgate making a rather harsh remark, citing the charge that Mount was some sort of pet project for Lampard. “I said in the fall that he is a very good player. I suppose now that Thomas Tuchel chooses him, everyone will agree.”

Mount may have joined Chelsea at the age of 6 and approached every challenge with a positive outlook, but that hasn’t stopped some fans of the club from judging a player who is still tangibly learning his trade.

The bond between Mount and Lampard is undoubtedly strong. Mount has displayed a framed shirt from Chelsea’s 2004-05 title-winning campaign signed by Lampard in his home; he won it in a lottery. Lampard, in turn, took a gamble on an unknown teenager by taking him to Derby County in 2018, where he started 35 league games in a campaign that ended in a painful defeat to Aston Villa in the final of the Championship playoffs at Wembley.

Mount has been the target of social media abuse, the Chelsea fanbase somewhat replicates the ruthlessness of Roman Abramovich, whose relentless pursuit of success has spawned 13 different managers during his 18 years of ownership. Mount’s father, Tony, insists that his son doesn’t read the abuse, but the family does. Still, the arrival of Tuchel and subsequent confidence in the midfielder has meant that that negativity was replaced by a growing recognition of traits that Lampard identified years earlier in a player whose only previous senior football experience was loaned to the Dutch club in 2017-18. Vitesse Arnhem.

“I never understood the critics,” said Lampard. When he stepped through the door [at Derby], I could immediately see something special in him.

“For me it was attitude and mentality. The first thing I always try to look at as a player is ‘what are they like?’ because that has a huge effect on how you can coach them and make them better Do they want to get better when they are young And what does that mean for the group you bring them to?

“Everyone spoke well about Mason in the Chelsea academy, so that was very clear. Then there was something that I had seen when he played. I watched him a lot when he played in the Netherlands and it was an awareness of things in the environment. him. A desire to work for the team off the ball, as well as the qualities he had on the ball. “

Natural fitness runs in the family – Mount’s grandfather was a boxer – but the Chelsea midfielder is not taking any chances with his fitness. He employs one of the UK-based chefs to prepare and deliver his food, adhering to a structured recovery and maintaining fitness throughout the season, exercising privately with a personal trainer and daily at the gym.

“When he came to Derby I was sure it was going to be a difficult ride for him in the championship because of the physicality of the competition,” said Lampard. “He had a really good spell in the beginning, then a more relaxed spell and then he overcame it at the end of the season and was fantastic in the run-up. For me that was a measure of the player he is, because he’s all young. players – since I was a midfield player, I probably watch even better – you won’t score 15, 20 goals a season when they’re 21. It doesn’t work like that. They have to find their way, grown up, find the right times to get in. the box to arrive and I started to see that even more in him this season.

“I’m not here anymore, but to see him develop again is great. He will continue to develop, he will be a great player. I’ve probably said enough about him because people used to call him my son.” “

With typical thoughts, Lampard controls himself for fear of tipping over from vocal support to the kind of partisan cheerleading he was once accused of. But any debate over Mount’s ability to perform at the highest level is certainly over, and only an injury will keep him from passing Chelsea’s 100 appearances this season before playing a pivotal role for England at Euro 2020 .

Mount is noticeably improving his final product, and Lampard believes his game is “constantly evolving”. That came initially by taking advantage of a more central role in Lampard’s 4-3-3 system, before adapting as one of Tuchel’s double number 10 in a 3-4-2-1 form. He scored ten goals in the Premier League last season and was three times short. He already has eight this semester – and three more for England – while his four league assists all came from set pieces. At the last European Championship striker Harry Kane was on corners with Gary Neville, an England coach under Roy Hodgson at that tournament, later claiming that a lack of expert set-piece takers forced them to use their number 9 as an atypical alternative. That won’t be the case this summer, as Mount offers much more than dead ball expertise.

Lampard explained why he made Mount captain against Luton in January and commented on a final answer about Mount, adding: “It wasn’t a gesture. I didn’t know I was leaving at that point, but with Mason I wanted to show told him that his position in the group had risen, and then he must understand that and rise. ”Tuchel has acknowledged that Mount does just that.

(Editor’s note: James Olley will be on the voting panel for the London Football Awards 2021.)