Erik ten Hag has affirmed that his assessment of summer signing Mason Mount remains unchanged, despite the midfielder experiencing limited playing time for Manchester United in recent weeks.
United secured Mount from Chelsea in a £60 million deal during the summer, and the 24-year-old featured in the team’s first two Premier League games before sustaining an injury that kept him sidelined for nearly a month.
Upon his return, Mount has only started one of United’s last six games across all competitions, and he is still awaiting his first goal. Instead, Ten Hag has opted for players like Scott McTominay and Christian Eriksen ahead of Mount.
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When questioned about Mount’s position in the team, Ten Hag asserted that his confidence in the former Chelsea midfielder remains intact. However, he challenged Mount to demonstrate that he deserves a spot in the starting lineup after recovering from his injury.
“No, it hasn’t changed at all,” Ten Hag stated regarding his opinion of Mount. “He started the season, then he got injured; it’s the worst moment for a new player to get injured because it halts the reintegration process, and that was definitely a setback for someone like him. And now he has to find his place back. He had some starts, also recently, last week against Newcastle, for instance. But there are always reasons, and sometimes it’s the injury, then other players coming in doing well; you have to wait for your time to play.”
One dilemma for Mount has been just how he fits into Ten Hag’s system. The 24-year-old has often played in a pivot at the base of United’s midfield, where he has struggled to impact proceedings.
Both McTominay and Eriksen have seen more minutes in that deeper role recently, while Mount’s substitute appearances have come further forward as he seeks to find a way back into Ten Hag’s starting lineup.
Mount was left out of Gareth Southgate’s England squad for the second international window in a row earlier this week.
While Southgate did not directly discuss Mount’s omission, he insisted that the door remains “100% open” to those players who did not make the latest squad, arguing England are in such good form that it has been impossible to drop anybody from his current team.