Mason Mount contract talks at ‘stalemate’ but expected to continue — report

After the summer transfer window slammed shut, Chelsea’s next priority (which had been a priority in the making for nearly a year already) was to secure certain necessary contract extensions, including to Reece James, Mason Mount, and Édouard Mendy. (There was also brief talk of a Thomas Tuchel contract extension, which is just weird in hindsight.)

In any case, we got the James deal done quickly, and also snuck in a new contract for Armando Broja, but there’s been no progress with either Mount or Mendy. That’s perhaps understandable in the latter’s case, thanks to his injury, drop in form, and the change in goalkeeping coaches and preferences, but back-to-back player of the year Mount is as Mr Chelsea as it gets, and is undroppable for head coach Graham Potter (even more so than he and his laser eyes had ever been under Thomas Tuchel or Frank Lampard).

When it first became obvious that Mount wasn’t about to immediately follow James in signing a new deal, it was said that his situation was more complicated. It’s not clear how or why that was, but it evidently remains so, with the Telegraph reporting yesterday that talks have reached a “stalemate” after not finding a “breakthrough” over the past couple months. Talks are of course expected to continue in the “coming months” and Chelsea remain “hopeful” that he will “eventually” sign. Mount’s current contract runs out in 18 months, so that eventually better be more like “soon”.

Chelsea’s attempts to reorganize and transform the behind the scenes operations in the player recruitment and technical departments probably haven’t helped to achieve a speedy resolution to this situation, but hopefully we don’t drag it out for much longer. We’ve got plenty of other things to worry about...

So sign him up, and let’s go!