Mason Mount's Many Misfortunes (please don't make another waste of money post)

Dude, he created 3 chances in the last game, it's not his fault we can't finish a ham sandwich. Fred is/was nowhere near good enough for United. Mount is not experiencing his best form, but if (and maybe that's a big IF) he gets back to his form 2 seasons ago, he will be far better for us than Fred. I do not share the Fred-love that many on here do. I never rated him, never wanted to see him play, and on the few occasions when he made it through a match without something braindead and calamitous happening, I only felt exhausted.
According to his stats he hasn't created any chances in either of the games.
In fact, looking at them, it's hard to work out what exactly he was doing on the pitch.
Now I'm the first to state that stats on their own don't win games, but he has a list of 0's and 0.5's, that's not even trying!
 
Did he? Must have slipped past me, I don't remember him doing all that much but maybe I missed it. His overall performance levels were not very good.

I think it's fair to ask what is form and what is Mount's usual. He has never excelled at international level, and he has one or two good seasons in a Chelsea shirt at 24 years old. I don't know what to make of that, even the good stuff was in a more attacking role and we're asking him to do something else which makes that form even harder to extrapolate and think we're going to get something like that. The chances of never getting the best out of him are pretty high if you have a set of form in an attacking role and then you're asking for him to get back to it in a completely different one. I also don't see what the skillset is that is going to transition, at least when Eriksen was pulled back into midfield you have a midfielder of undoubted technical skill.

Well, I think you feeling exhausted is more a you thing and how you're processing the match because I never really felt that when Fred was in a team. Fred had a lot of good games for United. Overall he wasn't good enough, no - but it remains to be seen whether Mount is going to be better. Not that Fred v Mount is especially important, the more important thing is going to be improving this squad - but it doesn't help when you buy players and there isn't a clear pattern of form or an obvious role that would give any confidence because you can end up chasing your own tail and not obviously improving. When we bought Onana you saw absolutely clarity of thinking on the signing and the profile, we had a weakness, we had a set of skills we wanted with a keeper and we went out and did it - and we seem to be getting what we bargained for. With Mount it is very hard to make heads or tails of it and we essentially have to just trust the manager because whatever has gone into that thinking isn't very clear and for me that's putting this signing into a danger zone at an early stage. Hopefully that is wrong.
Well, there's obviously something not working with the Casemiro - Bruno - Mount triumvirate. The midfielders we are allegedly looking at buying (Amrabat, Gravenberch) or giving an increased responsibility to (Mainoo, Hannibal) won't work either, if they are merely stepping in for Mount. I see Mount as more of a Bruno replacement, but played alongside a DM as sort of a link to the AM also doesn't work, because Casemiro is not as mobile as he once was (was he ever that quick?). It does look like ETH is assembling parts for some Voltron thing that only he can see.

That said, I think Mount has been good, and when I see things breaking down, it hasn't been because of him. I could be deluding myself, but I do think he's ultimately going to be an important piece of this ETH Voltron.
 
Well, there's obviously something not working with the Casemiro - Bruno - Mount triumvirate. The midfielders we are allegedly looking at buying (Amrabat, Gravenberch) or giving an increased responsibility to (Mainoo, Hannibal) won't work either, if they are merely stepping in for Mount. I see Mount as more of a Bruno replacement, but played alongside a DM as sort of a link to the AM also doesn't work, because Casemiro is not as mobile as he once was (was he ever that quick?). It does look like ETH is assembling parts for some Voltron thing that only he can see.

That said, I think Mount has been good, and when I see things breaking down, it hasn't been because of him. I could be deluding myself, but I do think he's ultimately going to be an important piece of this ETH Voltron.
The issue might not be the set-up alone. To me, I looks like heavy legs are as much as an issue. I wonder if they have trained too hard going into the season. If so, it might pay off in the weeks to come.
 
My apologies. After rereading, I did indeed misunderstand and misinterpret.
No worries! You've made some great posts on the subject. It's a shame the clubs standards have sunk so much that Mount being our marquee signing in an attempt to improve on last season is accepted by some. He's not good enough in general but we actually spent £50+m on him when he was in his last year which makes it even worse. Then you see City sign Kovacic who was the type of CM we actually needed.

It's a terrible transfer and the people defending it will realise soon. Just like all our big transfers.
 
According to his stats he hasn't created any chances in either of the games.

Yeah, he's created 0 chances.

Worse, he's had 0 passes into the penalty area. Somehow he's also only completed 2 passes into the final third (Onana's also had 2. The goalkeeper I mean. Not the Everton defensive midfielder who's forward passing doesn't exist. He's made 7).

He's made 4 progressive passes total in the 2 games he's played. Eriksen had 4 in his 40-something minute sub appearances. Bruno has 20.

His duel win % is the lowest in the entire squad, he's attempted 0 shots, completed 0 dribbles and he's had fewer progressive carrying yards than basically anyone in the team.

Other than that he's had a very promising start.
 
Ffs.

We have a promising midfielder in preseason who looks like he can get serious minutes. Mainoo injured.

We have a right sided player who can challenge and even usurp Antony this season. Amad injured.

We have an actual proper centre forward for once. Just what we need to start the season. HojLUND. kept out the team because of a potential injury.

We have a new midfielder who can help us carry the ball and press high up. Mount injured.

Of course those guys are injured. It's never the scrubs like McTominay or Co who are the ones picking up knocks.
Just add our best left back to the shopping list too mate.
 
Yeah, he's created 0 chances.

Worse, he's had 0 passes into the penalty area. Somehow he's also only completed 2 passes into the final third (Onana's also had 2. The goalkeeper I mean. Not the Everton defensive midfielder who's forward passing doesn't exist. He's made 7).

He's made 4 progressive passes total in the 2 games he's played. Eriksen had 4 in his 40-something minute sub appearances. Bruno has 20.

His duel win % is the lowest in the entire squad, he's attempted 0 shots, completed 0 dribbles and he's had fewer progressive carrying yards than basically anyone in the team.

Other than that he's had a very promising start.

That backs up what i saw. He is next to useless, but 'decent' games. The standards have fallen so much at a club, that a 55m signing can get away with performances like that. I think Kleberson and Djemba Djemba had a bigger impact in games for us.
 
Why is last season's start so important? The baseline performance is what we achieved over the season. I don't find the opening 2 games to be very compelling as an argument, if there was a 2 game trophy for that maybe it would be, but if there was we wouldn't be winning it on points or performance levels. I don't see a high player churn within the XI's we've fielded for me to want to go back to Erik ten Hag's first two competitive fixtures as a Man Utd manager and directly compare them to this season. It seems very artificial to put forward that argument.

What should be expected is that taking our average level of performance from last season, you'd hope for signs of improvement early on based on learnings from last season, preseason training time, and signings because it is supposed to be progressive development expanding on what we are building. That's fairly straight forward and intuitive and basically the point of management, incremental improvement at the least. Sometimes it doesn't happen early in a season, but let's call that for what it is, it has been pretty poor and so far Mason Mount in exchange for Eriksen hasn't yielded anything good.

The worry being that there isn't much to fall back on. It would be nice to think we could point to Mason Mount's great recent form for club or country. Or for his history of solid performances in the role we're playing him. But we can't do that, we basically have to go for these hopeful notions of "he'll improve" etc. It's good you are concentrating on two games because honestly that is about the one saving grace with Mount at the moment because the logic behind it looks very strange.
By this rationale the only metric we can discuss is the end of the season.

The point of the conversation was someone claiming we are weaker this season, despite the fact we are in a stronger position than we were at the same stage of last season, ie, after two games.
 
Yeah, he's created 0 chances.

Worse, he's had 0 passes into the penalty area. Somehow he's also only completed 2 passes into the final third (Onana's also had 2. The goalkeeper I mean. Not the Everton defensive midfielder who's forward passing doesn't exist. He's made 7).

He's made 4 progressive passes total in the 2 games he's played. Eriksen had 4 in his 40-something minute sub appearances. Bruno has 20.

His duel win % is the lowest in the entire squad, he's attempted 0 shots, completed 0 dribbles and he's had fewer progressive carrying yards than basically anyone in the team.

Other than that he's had a very promising start.

Thank you for confirming with real statistics what my two eyes can see.

But yeah. He runs and stuff. So he’s had a good start. :rolleyes: According to some.

A good portion of Chelsea fans wanted rid of him, and here we are picking g up a bargain at £55m for a player on his final year that has been underperforming for quite some time. Or perhaps he was over-performing at some stage, and what we’re seeing now is par.

£55m. For this shower of shite.
 
It's a shame maddison didn't play in the Dutch league when eth was at ajax instead of mount otherwise we may have signed the more talented player out of the two of them on the ball and he can actually play in midfield, he is making that spurs side tick at the moment where as mount has had the opposite effect for us
 
Crazy to change the system we play for one player and that player gets injured, no back up or assistance for our D.M.

You've got this backwards. Mount was brought in to facilitate the change to the system, not the other way around.
 
You've got this backwards. Mount was brought in to facilitate the change to the system, not the other way around.
It's a shame maddison didn't play in the Dutch league when eth was at ajax instead of mount otherwise we may have signed the more talented player out of the two of them on the ball and he can actually play in midfield, he is making that spurs side tick at the moment where as mount has had the opposite effect for us
We have Bruno, Maddison is the same type of player. We needed a cm capable of pressing and progressing the ball.
 
A player we didn’t need and whose fee together with the Højlund fee, would have gotten us Harry Kane. I support Erik, but can’t understand his reasoning here.

1. The fee for Kane would have almost certainly been a lot higher for us than Bayern paid
2. The total transfer package would be much higher (transfer fee + signing on fee + wages)
3. ETH obviously felt two young players with potential that could cover two positions is better than signing one 30 year old player

I think these are quite clearly the reasons. It's fair to suggest Kane would have been the better signing but Mount has player just 2 league games for us so far and Højlund hasn't even played for us yet. We need to give them a chance.
 
can we get off the damn kane train people. Wouldve been more expensive than it was for bayern, assuming he even wouldve wanted to go to manchester. Our midfield looks thin with mount being injured are people really saying we shouldve gone into the season with our current available midfield as the healthiest, best case scenario? That be suicidal. We needed the midfield help, and just unlucky our big signing got injured early.
 
If some itK would have posted that Liverpool would sign Mount & we’d go on to sign Macallister+Gravenberch for the same [potentially less?] there’d have been a ‘Let’s all laugh at. . .’ moment.

Quite simply Mount can not just be serviceable, which is what I think he’ll eventually become for us, he’s not a bad player by any means but he’s not the no.8 that’s going to up the level, & given a choice between Mount or Macallister/Gravenberch it feels like a no brainer at this point.

I don’t get why we went all out in the way we did so early, I genuinely hope he proves me well & truly wrong.
 
If some itK would have posted that Liverpool would sign Mount & we’d go on to sign Macallister+Gravenberch for the same [potentially less?] there’d have been a ‘Let’s all laugh at. . .’ moment.

Quite simply Mount can not just be serviceable, which is what I think he’ll eventually become for us, he’s not a bad player by any means but he’s not the no.8 that’s going to up the level, & given a choice between Mount or Macallister/Gravenberch it feels like a no brainer at this point.

I don’t get why we went all out in the way we did so early, I genuinely hope he proves me well & truly wrong.
I think Mount can do a lot better than we’ve seen so far. At the very least as you say, he can be a support player, but he has way higher potential.
 
Thread title gave me more entertainment than the player has managed so far
 
Hopefully he comes back into a more settled side with the likes of Bruno, Case and Rashford up to speed. Reckon it'll be much easier for him to settle then.
 
We have Bruno, Maddison is the same type of player. We needed a cm capable of pressing and progressing the ball.
I think if Maddison was in this side he'd be "progressing the ball" a lot better than Mount is. There are different ways to move the ball, ultimately. Maddison has an eye for a pass and creativity that Mount seems to lack. I think he's also got more balls about him to get on the ball and try things.

He would have been a better signing than Mount. Still not the ideal signing, I think we should have looked at a different profile but to be honest for whatever Maddison's weaknesses are I'd rather have his strengths than Mount's nondescript set of skills.
 
He better be good. With the money spent in transfer and wages, he will hog the position of the expected player like FDJ type Deep lying playmaker midfielder and it will take 2-3 years at least for United to find another replacement.
 
He better be good. With the money spent in transfer and wages, he will hog the position of the expected player like FDJ type Deep lying playmaker midfielder and it will take 2-3 years at least for United to find another replacement.

How is Mason Mount occupying the position of FDJ?
 
See him more as a Bruno replacement. Perfectly comfortable seeing him further forward as a 10. I think when he's in form he's a fantastic player but he's never come across as a dynamic midfielder excelling in deeper areas. I would like to see the 4-2-3-1 with a more natural 8 alongside Casemiro and Mount behind the striker. Just can't see him succeeding as an 8 unless his defensive positioning improves, so there's not so big a space for the DM to plug. The issue around Mount is not exclusive to the player but rather the balance of the team. For instance:

Bruno-Casemiro-Nunes.

Bruno-Casmiro-Mount

It just doesn't feel right and it's got nothing to do with the quality of the players respectfully it's the profile of the players in the said positions.
 
Mate you are struggling aren't you. Mount is an 8 and a half positional player. FDJ was never that.
Give your head a shake mate. In United, if FDJ is to play in starting XI which player he will replace. I hope you won’t be silly in replying Casemiro or Bruno in the midfield 3.
 
Give your head a shake mate. In United, if FDJ is to play in starting XI which player he will replace. I hope you won’t be silly in replying Casemiro or Bruno in the midfield 3.

Just wow. Paranoia seems to peak on deadline days.
 
Give your head a shake mate. In United, if FDJ is to play in starting XI which player he will replace. I hope you won’t be silly in replying Casemiro or Bruno in the midfield 3.
I hope you're not silly in thinking Casemiro didn't come in as an emergency FdJ replacement.

When there's many posters questioning your thought process, it tends to be worth giving your head a wobble.
 
Extraordinary! Can't at this moment decide if you're a wum or if you gain your inspiration from playing FIFA in amateur mode.
Read your posts which I replied you will know the wum who contributed nothing. I replied don’t even worth replying as your question is nothing but a wum.
 
Read your posts which I replied you will know the wum who contributed nothing. I replied don’t even worth replying as your question is nothing but a wum.
Seems you still didn’t come out of Casemiro is FDJ replacement as your head is still in the sand.
We would have ended up buying a DM in same window or next after getting FDJ as he is not going to be the most defensive player in midfield 3 in PL.
 
Seems you still didn’t come out of Casemiro is FDJ replacement as your head is still in the sand.
We would have ended up buying a DM in same window or next after getting FDJ as he is not going to be the most defensive player in midfield 3 in PL.
While you are actually under the impression that we would have afforded both, given we already massively overspent without him last season and risked harming our FFP materially.

Back to Mount vs FdJ though, the latter was the ball carrier from deep and liked to pick up the ball from the CBs and drive it up.

You are misguided if you're looking at where Mount is deployed and think "oh yeah, that's what we were planning with Frenkie".
 
While you are actually under the impression that we would have afforded both, given we already massively overspent without him last season and risked harming our FFP materially.

Back to Mount vs FdJ though, the latter was the ball carrier from deep and liked to pick up the ball from the CBs and drive it up.

You are misguided if you're looking at where Mount is deployed and think "oh yeah, that's what we were planning with Frenkie".
No mate, I don’t think that.
I believe if we had brought FDJ we would have ended up playing Fred or McT next to him, found defensively run over and then bought a good defensive player(like Casemiro) to play next to FDJ in next window.

I am not thinking about FDJ as that ship has passed long back. I agree that mount is a 8.5 but the post is about better he be good. As I see that as a 8.5 defensively if he is not good enough, it makes the team vulnerable and leaves Casemiro to defend on his own.

Next to Casemiro(as a 8 or 8.5) an ideal player would be one who is having a good range of passing, dribbling and also defensively not too meek. Ideally Modric, FDJ, Enzo type of player.
 
No mate, I don’t think that.
I believe if we had brought FDJ we would have ended up playing Fred or McT next to him, found defensively run over and then bought a good defensive player(like Casemiro) to play next to FDJ in next window.

I am not thinking about FDJ as that ship has passed long back. I agree that mount is a 8.5 but the post is about better he be good. As I see that as a 8.5 defensively if he is not good enough, it makes the team vulnerable and leaves Casemiro to defend on his own.

Next to Casemiro(as a 8 or 8.5) an ideal player would be one who is having a good range of passing, dribbling and also defensively not too meek. Ideally Modric, FDJ, Enzo type of player.
You are however insinuating that Mount was brought as a FdJ replacement and that's simply not the case. He actually fits the bill for what Ten Hag wants to adopt.
 
Overrated. English Brexshit passion merchant. INEOS inspired signing.:mad:

Am I doing this right redcafe?
 
A quick look at how Ajax played under Ten Hag will put to rest the FdJ/Mount debate.

Whether it would have worked? I don’t know for sure and we will never know. It sure worked at Ajax and the Dutch NT.