Mason Mount gushes about Hakim Ziyech raising the standard at Chelsea

Mason Mount seeks out and thrives on competition, so it’s no surprise that the 21-year-old has remained a firm fixture in Frank Lampard’s lineups despite all the prognostications of his impending demise after Chelsea’s summer spending spree — especially in attacking positions.

In a way, all the attacking reinforcements have clarified Mount’s own best position. His versatility affords him the ability to play just about anywhere in midfield, but it turns out that a more box-to-box No.8 midfield role suits him better overall than anything further forward. Last year, Mount described himself as a non-luxury No.10. Perhaps a more precise term now would be an essential No.8.

Whatever we want to call him, Mount’s stepped up his game, like many others, pushed on by the new arrivals, especially the man they call The Wizard (of AMS and soon SW6).

“[Ziyech] is a brilliant player. He knows what he can bring to the team with his quality left foot. The gaffer always speaks about having the competition to keep our standards high, and Hakim is a world-class player. We want players of that calibre coming in.”

Despite a few wobbles, Chelsea are sitting just three points behind the league leaders and lead the Premier League in goals scored (first to 20!) as well as goal difference (+10). The team’s attack remains quite dangerous, and is only getting better.

“To have 14 different scorers has been brilliant. We need that threat from set-pieces, which I don’t think we really had last season. This season we’ve definitely worked on that and it’s been working and to have that many scorers gives us a different dimension to our game and teams definitely fear us more.”

-Mason Mount; source: Mirror

Re-establishing that fear factor, which we’ve lost radually over the past few years, will take time and patience and of of course more hard work.

But we already know Mason Mount will be out there on the frontlines, leading the charge.