Chelsea’s sporting directors blame World Cup for Mount catastrophe

To the outside world, Chelsea’s sporting directors look to have made a real mess of this Mason Mount situation.

The midfielder is set to leave Chelsea for Manchester United after his contact entered it’s final year.

But how did it come to this? The Daily Mail today produced a really interesting in depth piece covering the situation. It’s hard to understand how a home grown star, who loves the club, has ended up leaving.

The piece raises various issues – essentially Mount had to go because he was too close to the end of his contract. How did it come to that? Well it’s partly blamed on the takeover 18 months ago, which saw all contract talks frozen just as Mount was about to sign a new deal.

The World Cup is also blamed – that came at the wrong time for Chelsea, who saw the period before Christmas as their last chance to organise something with the midfielder before the vultures started circling.

Since then, Mount has not been interested in signing for a club who he felt didn’t value him, and the club’s main concern has been maxing out the fee that they want for him.

It’s a sorry story, and one that could have so easily been avoided. There’s certainly a bit of bad luck and bad timing in there, but we can’t help but feel that these excuses don’t hide the fact that it could all have been resolved much more positively.