Why Man United Want Mason Mount So Badly
Despite their need for a striker and a goalkeeper seemingly far more important to Manchester United's summer transfer business, some clues in Erik Ten Hag's approach last season have hinted at the huge importance of a player like Mason Mount.
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00:00 Hi there everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here and if you will permit me the Seinfeld-esque
00:08 opening, what's the deal with Mason Mount?
00:11 It's a fair question and one you've undoubtedly heard men of your father's generation loudly
00:16 asking in pubs during World Cups, but if you're a Man United fan, right now it's a pretty
00:21 pertinent one.
00:22 And that is because Eric Ten Hag is going to want to do a lot this summer with fairly
00:26 limited resources.
00:27 They're going to want a number 9 who can score loads of goals, Spenny, they're going to want
00:30 a goalkeeper who can play with the ball at his feet and get involved in the build-up,
00:33 Spenny, so why is he funnelling a fairly major chunk of his budget into the midfield, into
00:39 the strongest area of the squad?
00:41 Well, I'll tell you.
00:44 Alright, so in its simplest terms, Eric Ten Hag really wants Mason Mount because the way
00:51 Manchester United currently play and the way he would ideally like them to play are not
00:56 the same.
00:57 And Mason Mount is probably the best player available right now for bridging that gap.
01:02 He messed around a lot with the shape and the formation, but this is pretty much what
01:05 he settled on last season.
01:07 Man United had their best run when they were playing like this.
01:09 Casemiro and Eriksen became the preferred pivot in the middle and Fernandes either played
01:13 as the number 10 or out off onto the right.
01:16 But what we did see towards the end of the season was Manchester United either lining
01:20 up or reverting into not a 4-2-3-1, but a 4-3-3.
01:24 The idea being that it better enabled Bruno Fernandes to get on the ball in more influential
01:28 areas to be pretty much everywhere all at once.
01:31 Casemiro, he would drop into a central area, pretty much stay disciplined and stay there.
01:35 Fernandes would then sort of drift into this right hand side.
01:37 He could pick up the ball anywhere he wanted, deep high, deep middle, wherever it was most
01:41 effective.
01:42 And that left a bit of a problem in this number eight spot.
01:45 If you're playing in a 4-3-3 and you've got one player who's going to be really disciplined
01:49 and stay in front of the back four and one player who's going to go everywhere chasing
01:52 the ball, trying to get on it and impact the game, that puts a lot of emphasis on this
01:56 other number eight to do several different things.
01:59 You have to cover a lot of ground in that role because you're not the most defensive
02:03 midfielder and you're not the most creative midfielder.
02:04 So you've got to be the one who leads the press.
02:06 You've got to get into this space.
02:07 You've got to come over to this area, that area, that area, wherever you are needed,
02:11 you need to be able to get there.
02:12 And if your little buddy over there has pretty much got free reign to go wherever he wants
02:15 to pick up the ball and just do the stuff that he's really good at, then you need to
02:19 be good at recognising the gaps he's leaving.
02:21 If he goes back into the number 10 role, you've got to cover across from there.
02:24 If he goes out to get involved with somebody there, you've kind of got to help more in
02:26 the middle.
02:27 If he comes across on your side, you've just got to move.
02:30 So you need to be intense.
02:31 You need to be intelligent.
02:32 You obviously need to be technically gifted and you play for Manchester United.
02:35 So you still need to be able to offer an attacking threat all of your own.
02:39 And the reason Tenhague never fully committed to this 4-3-3 last year, while we only saw
02:43 it in fits and starts, is because they didn't have this player that was going to bring it
02:47 all together.
02:48 Christian Eriksen is obviously technically fantastic.
02:49 He reads the game really well.
02:51 He understands space, but he's not the most intense player.
02:53 He can't leave the press for you.
02:55 He wants to play a little deeper.
02:56 Fred has got that intensity.
02:57 He can go pretty much anywhere.
02:58 He's got an engine for days, but he maybe doesn't read the game as well.
03:01 He's maybe not technically as good.
03:02 So he's not quite the right player either.
03:04 And Scott McTominay is just sort of somewhere between the two.
03:07 Not a great fit.
03:08 Now, whatever system Man United end up playing next year, they're still going to want a goal
03:10 scorer and they're still going to want a new goalkeeper.
03:13 But if they want to play this way, which clearly Eric Tenhague thinks they should, they need
03:18 this player.
03:19 They need a specific person to do this job.
03:21 And that brings us nicely to Mason Mount.
03:24 Technically on the ball, he's absolutely excellent.
03:26 Like his dead balls, his passing, everything like that is top, top, top tier.
03:29 He's one of the most intense presses out of central midfield in the Premier League, whether
03:33 he's playing in the front three or the middle three.
03:35 He leads the press.
03:36 He spots traps.
03:37 It's just his brain works really, really well.
03:39 And when it comes to covering areas and covering space, the kid understands space better than
03:43 f***ing Jean-Luc Picard.
03:45 And on top of all that, he's a fantastic carrier of the ball.
03:48 Like if you look at the profiles of Fernandez and Casemiro, you'd imagine he'd start with,
03:52 if they get the ball back deep, he can run that up the other end of the pitch.
03:55 He can turn defence into attack really easily.
03:57 But the way to think about Mason Mount is he has all the best attributes of both Ericsson
04:02 and Fred while still having the defensive intensity of Casemiro.
04:05 And while he's nowhere near Bruno Fernandez's levels, when it comes to offering a goal threat,
04:10 being able to provide assists, he's not a massive drop off from there.
04:13 Wow, that all sounds amazing.
04:14 Adam, can you prove any of that?
04:16 Yes, yes, I can.
04:17 Just to illustrate how bad Chelsea's season has been, these are Mason Mount's stats for
04:20 his attacking contribution last season.
04:23 And whoa, they're really bad.
04:26 But they are crucially all massive, massive drop offs from previous seasons.
04:30 Like the two seasons leading up to the last one, he was in the top five in the Premier
04:33 League across both seasons for just goal involvement.
04:37 Whether that was being in the build up, giving an assist, scoring the goal himself, he was
04:40 in the top five of the entire league.
04:42 So I would suggest that if you put him in a better side, one that is capable of actually
04:46 taking chances or whether there's a lot of other teammates capable of creating them for
04:49 you, he would return to somewhere near those sort of numbers and not these.
04:53 Oh, Jesus.
04:54 The thing is, despite the fact Chelsea have been toilet this year, he's still been able
05:01 to do really, really good work elsewhere.
05:03 Like, first of all, if you look at his defensive numbers compared to other midfielders in the
05:06 Premier League, nobody is doing it like Mason Mount.
05:10 He's right at the top of the rankings for tackles in both the middle and the attacking
05:13 third.
05:14 Nobody is dribbling around him by the looks of it, which is very important to stop encounter
05:17 attacks.
05:18 And somehow he's just got the highest number of blocked shots out of midfielders and attackers,
05:24 which is how does that happen?
05:26 Sorry, I was a bit Seinfeld as well, wasn't it?
05:28 How does that happen?
05:29 What are you blocking shots for?
05:31 Now, nobody's come up with a stat yet that shows you how good someone is at recognising
05:34 areas of space and getting into them.
05:36 You need the eye test for that.
05:38 And for the eye test, let's go to the Champions League final.
05:41 Now this is probably Mason Mount's single biggest contribution in a Chelsea shirt.
05:45 And in this game, him and Havertz were both playing as like false tens off Timo Werner,
05:51 which sounds crazy, but it was actually really good for Mount.
05:54 Now in this system, Timo Werner's job was to make loads of runs all over the place,
05:57 try and pull defenders around and create space.
05:59 Kai Havertz's job was to exploit that space centrally.
06:03 And Mason Mount's job was to then go all the way across the pitch, left to right, either
06:07 flank in the middle and find whatever other pockets of space that then created.
06:12 And this, for their goal, worked absolutely beautifully.
06:15 The ball comes out from the goalkeeper too, I think that's Chilwell over on the left-hand
06:18 side and Kyle Walker is the player who has to then push on to close him down.
06:22 Now because Walker's pushed out, he could very easily go into the channel with this
06:25 and indeed if Chilwell brings the ball down and wants to take a touch, that's where he's
06:29 going to go.
06:30 But because his run was so good, Chilwell has the option to just drop it into him first
06:33 time and he's now found all this space on the halfway line.
06:36 And because Mount has moved into this position and gotten onto the ball, that forces a bit
06:40 of a knock-on effect with the Man City back line that allows his two teammates to do their
06:44 work.
06:45 Stones has to come across to keep an eye on Mount, that leaves a gap for Werner to run
06:48 into which pulls Diaz away, meaning that Havertz, who's now found that bit of space near Zinchenko,
06:53 can run into the gap that's been left.
06:55 Now I could show you a few other clips of him running down the channel, of getting into
06:58 the half space.
06:59 He's basically very good at finding these areas either for a first-time pass or to be
07:02 an option for somebody else.
07:04 But I want to stay on this goal because obviously the big question about him playing for Man
07:08 United is, can he provide enough threat?
07:11 And this is not an easy ball to play.
07:14 Yeah, he's got a big area to hit with the pass, but the weight of it has to be far enough
07:18 in front of Havertz that he can get a proper run away from Zinchenko, but not so far ahead
07:23 of Havertz that the goalkeeper is capable of coming out and sweeping it up.
07:27 It might not look it, but honestly the margin for error in this pass is about that much.
07:31 I'd say like if it's that short, then Havertz has to slow his run down and Zinchenko catches
07:35 him up.
07:36 But if it's that long, then it's just too far ahead and Edison will clean it up.
07:40 It's a brilliant pass.
07:41 And that is, I think, why Mason Mount is probably worth the money because you could go and get
07:45 loads of different players who will do the brain stuff, who will do the running, who
07:48 will cover the space.
07:49 But to combine that with somebody who is as good on the ball, there aren't many out there.
07:54 Like for how bad Chelsea have been this season, how in and out of the side he's been, how
07:58 many different positions they've utilised him in, his passing numbers are still excellent.
08:03 And the one stat I think it's really important to look at there is the progressive passes.
08:06 Now we don't know what a progressive pass is, it's basically just anything that moves
08:09 the ball forward around about 10 yards or any pass in the penalty area, but it doesn't
08:14 count any forward passes that come out of your defensive third.
08:17 So you can't just knock it sideways, you can't just knock it long.
08:20 It's got to be something in a really useful part of the pitch that moves you closer towards
08:24 the goal.
08:25 And just to be honest, to my United fans, Mason Mount here is in the 93rd percentile,
08:28 which means he's in the top 7% across the season.
08:31 Bruno Fernandes, who you'd rightly think of as your best player for progressing the ball,
08:35 is in the 95th percentile, so the top 5%.
08:38 Like he's way better than Mount in a number of different things, but when it comes to
08:42 this just basic ability to move the ball closer to your opponent's goal to make the situation
08:47 more dangerous, he's not a massive drop-off.
08:50 And even the staff that aren't mind-blowing there, like his number of key passes, his
08:53 passes into the final third, his passes into the penalty area, they're still really, really
08:57 good numbers for someone playing this kind of role whose main job is to fill gaps and
09:01 move around and press your opponent.
09:03 I know we're kind of tiptoeing into the territory of that Simpsons joke about the thing with
09:07 Jazzers, you have to listen to all the notes they're not playing, but if you want to use
09:10 this kind of system, which Ten Hag clearly believes would get the most out of Fernandes,
09:15 is a great use of Casemiro, allows you to have a really good ball-playing centre-back,
09:19 would probably do way more for the two wide attackers and whatever number 9 they get in
09:23 would suit him really well.
09:25 The player that makes that work is this sort of workhorse, creative, pressing number 8.
09:32 Like this is the most vague and nebulous thing I'm ever going to say, but if Man United put
09:35 Mason Mount in this system and he gelled with his teammates and it all worked the way it's
09:39 supposed to, they would just magically look better in an attacking sense and look more
09:44 solid in a defensive sense without you really being able to put your finger on why.
09:48 But watch, you can, look, I'll do it, here's the finger and there's me putting it on the
09:52 reason - Mason Mount.
09:53 Ten Hag clearly values positional intelligence as well, by the way, if you look at the number
09:57 of positions Mason Mount has played in just for Chelsea this season, they've had him as
10:00 a false 9, they've had him as a number 10, they've had him as part of two 10s, they've
10:03 had him out wide on the left, out wide on the right, they've had him in a midfield 3
10:06 on both the left and right and they've had him as a pivot in a 2.
10:10 Ten Hag loves to swap between formations and systems mid-game, so Mason Mount is in that
10:15 regard as well absolutely perfect for him.
10:18 Anyway I know it's dividing opinion amongst Man United fans and it still is a lot of money
10:22 if the budget is as small as being reported so let me know if this has changed your mind
10:25 or if you still don't want him or if you wanted him all the time from the beginning in the
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10:35 What was that?
10:36 In the meantime though thank you very much for watching, you can get me on Twitter @AdamClearyClery
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10:46 But until next time, hope you've enjoyed the video, I'll see you soon, goodbye!
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