Ben Jacobs’ exclusive Chelsea column on Simon Phillips’ Substack is out, and his words on Mason Mount confirm all our suspicions of this week.
The midfielder is still likely to leave Chelsea, and Jacobs says “Chelsea sources still feel there’s a high probability of an exit,” but it could take some time. Chelsea are “bullish” on the price they can get for him and they will try to hold out to get as much as possible for the midfielder, whose contract expires at the end of next season.
Manchester United’s opening £40m offer has been rejected, and they’re keen to spend less than £60m on the England man.
As we wrote over the weekend, this is developing into a summer-long waiting game where a bit of brinkmanship takes place between Chelsea and United. The Blues can always gamble on keeping Mount for another year and hoping to sign him up at some point in the next 12 months, but it’s a big risk and United are banking on calling our bluff by September.
The longer we delay, the greater the chance another team decide to enter the race and really shake the whole thing up. That might be just what the owners are counting on, and we may even see leaks from their end pointing to new interest from elsewhere if they really get desperate to juice up the news cycle at some point in the summer.
