Mason Mount

[Mark Kelly]

10 minutes ago, Willian Dollar Baby said:

There's plenty of other well connected sources saying similar. I don't take any media reports as gospel but reading between the lines this rings true.

The rumoured James contract is around £250K per week so you would expect an offer of parity there. In which case Mount would likely have signed as rival clubs are unlikely to offer equal terms, particularly when there is a massive transfer fee being paid on top of wages. 

If we wanted to keep him I'm convinced he would stay. With potential FFP trouble it's the quickest way to give us finacial comfort. Looking back at silly deals last summer like Cucurella and KK, this has cornered us into a position where we have to sell to balance the books.

Summary of the possible fees we could get for homegrown players who would all get tonnes of Premier League interest and are likely to be on lower wages. I've been conservative here:

Mount - £70mill

Gallagher - £40mill

RLC - £20mill

Chalobah - £25mill

Colwill - £40mill 

 

Vs a few on high wages:

Auba, KK, Ziyech, Thiago Silva, Kepa, Azpi,  Kante, Lukaku (loan at best)  - £0

Transfer fees are gettable for the below but nothing close to what we paid. High wages disclaimer and a limited market with European clubs unlikely to have the funds to buy:

Havertz - £30mill 

Kova - £30mill

Pulisic - £20mill

Mendy - £10mill

Sterling - £25mill

Quickest and easiest way to balance the books is to fire sell the valuable homegrown players. I'm very concerned this is the route we go down. 

We only need to find sales totalling £20m by the end of June from reports I've read so we could keep all of them except RLC and still be compliant. 

[thevelourfog]

1 hour ago, Willian Dollar Baby said:

Quickest and easiest way to balance the books is to fire sell the valuable homegrown players. I'm very concerned this is the route we go down. 

Everything you're saying makes much more sense to me than what lots of Chelsea supporters seem to be choosing to believe. This lot have made some catastrophic financial decisions and it makes our home grown players very vulnerable. As well as Mount, I'll be very surprised if Colwill is a Chelsea player come September. 

1 hour ago, Mark Kelly said:

We only need to find sales totalling £20m by the end of June from reports I've read so we could keep all of them except RLC and still be compliant. 

Perhaps only £20m to cover what has already been done, but there's clearly a lot more spending to do.

[ROTG]

2 hours ago, thevelourfog said:

I find it pretty easy to believe. Every contract offer is going to be verbal only initially. And we're talking about a time frame where, at its start, the owners were throwing money around incredibly stupidly, and its end it was pretty clear we'd be taking a huge hit on the next season's income.

Maybe it just a case of Mason thinks he has more chances of winning silverware at another club. 

Lets be honest, Chelsea is so messed up at the moment, not even mystic meg could predict when the next trophy or  PL title is coming the clubs way. 

[Willian Dollar Baby]

1 hour ago, Mark Kelly said:

We only need to find sales totalling £20m by the end of June from reports I've read so we could keep all of them except RLC and still be compliant. 

If that's correct, that solves last years mess. What about next season?

Nkunku already agreed for approx £60million. We also want to sign a GK, 2 CM's and a Striker. This is all without any European football. Currently strong links with Ugarte (£60mill) and Caicedo (£60+mill), eye watering amounts. 

Poch's first job should be to get on the phone to Lukaku and convince him to try at Chelsea one more time. Poch has a knack for getting players in great physical shape, help him shed a few pounds and there's an asset there. Solves 2 major problems in one hit. In another world I'd happily never see Lukaku back however compromises must be made. 

[Mark Kelly]

Just now, Willian Dollar Baby said:

If that's correct, that solves last years mess. What about next season?

Nkunku already agreed for approx £60million. We also want to sign a GK, 2 CM's and a Striker. This is all without any European football. Currently strong links with Ugarte (£60mill) and Caicedo (£60+mill), eye watering amounts. 

Poch's first job should be to get on the phone to Lukaku and convince him to try at Chelsea one more time. Poch has a knack for getting players in great physical shape, help him shed a few pounds and there's an asset there. Solves 2 major problems in one hit. In another world I'd happily never see Lukaku back however compromises must be made. 

Again , don't quote me on this but if I understand it properly , raising £20m from sales not only gets us out from under FFP this season but then allows us another tranche of purchases for this season onwards 

[Willian Dollar Baby]

28 minutes ago, Mark Kelly said:

Again , don't quote me on this but if I understand it properly , raising £20m from sales not only gets us out from under FFP this season but then allows us another tranche of purchases for this season onwards 

I won't claim to have any idea how close we are on FFP. Looking at the facts I do know:

• We have spent an absolute boatload of money in the last 12 months (reportedly £585million)

• No European football income

• We need to sell a lot of players

• Many of those players will need to be paid off/given away due to high wages

• Our HG players are all very valuable on lower salaries. Also represent "pure profit" in FFP terms, whatever that means. 

• Any transfer fees are only likely to come from the PL

I'm very nervous on the long term damage this ownership has already done. The old ownership learnt their lessons. After Malouda, Essien, Anelka ect we stopped offering long term deals to those over 30. Even to JT and Frank. Last summer this is what we did:

KK: 31 years old -  £30million, 5 year deal

Azpi: 32 years old - 2 year deal

Sterling: 27 years old - £50million, 5 year deal

And the biggest disgrace

Aubameyang: 33 and released by Arsenal a year ago because he was past it and had a bad attitude. £14million+ Alonso + 2 year contract 

Roman hadn't given more than a 3 year deal to any manager for years. First managerial hire for Boehly is Potter and his whole backroom team on a 5 year deal. Cost us about £25million just to do that, let alone pay them all off 6 months later. 

8/9 year contracts to bypass FFP. Now I do like many of our January signings however this is an extremely high risk strategy. 

Under Roman the only time we did similar was a 7 year deal for Kepa. I'm not sure I need to add any further comment on how that has worked out. 

 

Edited June 2, 2023 by Willian Dollar Baby

[xceleryx]

14 minutes ago, Mark Kelly said:

Again , don't quote me on this but if I understand it properly , raising £20m from sales not only gets us out from under FFP this season but then allows us another tranche of purchases for this season onwards 

This is how I understand it also.

£20m or whatever the figure is raised before the end of June covers us for the current FFP season. Then once July rolls around the "new season" begins and any spending done in this period counts towards the next seasons FFP, which will also see several outgoing at the same time to offset things further. 

I don't think out FFP issues are as significant as what is portrayed.

[xceleryx]

2 minutes ago, Willian Dollar Baby said:

I won't claim to have any idea how close we are on FFP. Looking at the facts I do know:

• We have spent an absolute boatload of money in the last 12 months (reportedly £585million)

• We need to sell a lot of players

• Many of those players will need to be paid off/given away due to high wages

• Our HG players are all very valuable on lower salaries. Also represent "pure profit" in FFP terms, whatever that means. 

• Any transfer fees are only likely to come from the PL

I'm very nervous on the long term damage this ownership has already done. The old ownership learnt their lessons. After Malouda, Essien, Anelka ect we stopped offering long term deals to those over 30. Even to JT and Frank. Last summer this is what we did:

KK: 31 years old -  £30million, 5 year deal

Azpi: 32 years old - 2 year deal

Sterling: 27 years old - £50million, 5 year deal

And the biggest disgrace

Aubameyang: 33 and released by Arsenal a year ago because he was past it and had a bad attitude. £14million+ Alonso + 2 year contract 

Roman hadn't given more than a 3 year deal to any manager for years. First managerial hire for Boehly is Potter and his whole backroom team on a 5 year deal. Cost us about £25million just to do that, let alone pay them all off 6 months later. 

8/9 year contracts to bypass FFP. Now I do like many of our January signings however this is an extremely high risk strategy. 

Under Roman the only time we did similar was a 7 year deal for Kepa. I'm not sure I need to add any further comment on how that has worked out. 

 

The difference though is that outside of the summer signings, which again were done in a unique set of circumstances because of the sale going through when the transfer window was already open we had to play catch-up, the rest of those signed in January are all cost controlled. Their transfer fees have been spread out over longer term deal, which means smaller yearly costs towards FFP. While the contracts handed out are lower in base salary with incentive based bonuses. This again helps keep the on book costs lower and more manageable, unlike the Kepa contract you raised as an example, or Lukaku being another. 

We'll potentially be clearing a lot of salary off the books, starting with the £5m or so we made in January selling Jorginho. Based on what wage information is out there we'll already be saving nearly £15m total between Zakaria and Joao Felix returning to their clubs.

If we sell RLC that's around another £12.5m off the books, Kovacic is another £10.5m, Mount £8.3m and so on.

It's not as if we're in a perils position where it's "sell to spend", and if we can't sell anyone then they'll be no incomings. 

[Bob Singleton]

58 minutes ago, Willian Dollar Baby said:

[SNIP]

• Our HG players are all very valuable on lower salaries. Also represent "pure profit" in FFP terms, whatever that means. 

[SNIP]

Buy a player for £100m on a 5 year contract = £20m/year book value (cost divided by contract length)

Sell after 3 years and the remaining book value is £40m; so any price over £40m represents pure profit, £40m represents break-even and anything less is a notional 'loss', but still goes down on the + side of the accounts.

A player who has come through the academy has no 'book value', so sell them for 1p,  £1.00 or £100m and it's all 'profit'

[CAVEAT: Wages obviously are included in FFP calculations, but it's simpler to explain using just the one variable of transfer fees]

If we sell a player for £100m where all of that income is 'profit', that allows the purchase of 5 players at £100m each on 5 year contracts.

As a club, Chelsea have generated over twice as much in player sales revenue than our nearest (traditional top 4) rivals going back the last 10 or so years; something which tends to go unnoticed given that it's our purchases that tend to make the headlines. For all the so-called mistakes we've made, we've often come out well, in FFP terms if not 'operating' terms.

Hazard (very much NOT a mistake) made us around £85m profit in FFP terms as he was in the final year of a contract that had already been extended. His (transfer) book value was in high single figures - not including his wages, which brought it to around £14m - so his sale to Madrid covered many a subsequent purchase. Add bonus clauses (such as Madrid winning the CL) and it was excellent business by Marina. Even 'failures' like Morata turned us a profit in terms of FFP. More recently Jorginho's sale to Arsenal provided us with an FFP profit... not huge, admittedly, but still "pure profit"

Hope that helps.

 

1 hour ago, xceleryx said:

This is how I understand it also.

£20m or whatever the figure is raised before the end of June covers us for the current FFP season. Then once July rolls around the "new season" begins and any spending done in this period counts towards the next seasons FFP, which will also see several outgoing at the same time to offset things further. 

I don't think out FFP issues are as significant as what is portrayed.

Correct. Most 'commentators' see the £550m+ spent figures and think "well they've got to sell at least £300m (or whatever) before they can spend again"

FFP is a different beast to the general profit/loss accounting system used to calculate the day-to-day health of a company or how much tax it may owe.

[Willian Dollar Baby]

2 hours ago, xceleryx said:

This is how I understand it also.

£20m or whatever the figure is raised before the end of June covers us for the current FFP season. Then once July rolls around the "new season" begins and any spending done in this period counts towards the next seasons FFP, which will also see several outgoing at the same time to offset things further. 

I don't think out FFP issues are as significant as what is portrayed.

FFP is judged over a 3 year rolling period so I don't think it's as simple as being compliant this year then just worrying about next year. The last 12 months will still be effective for a further 2 year period. 

Our 4 CBs next year should be Badiashelle, Fofana, Colwill and Chalobah. Keep Thiago around in a reduced role if necessary. 

Instead we will likely sell Chalobah, a very good squad player on a low salary because Koulibaly (31 years old) is on a 5 year contract and unsellable. This will look great as an FFP profit but in 2 years when Thiago and KK are useless we will end up spending more money on an average back up on big wages. 

Same goes for Hall and Maatsen with Cucurella. Hall already looks a better LB than Cucurella whilst playing out of position. Hall played half his games against Man City so he's hardly had easy fixtures. 

1 hour ago, Bob Singleton said:

Buy a player for £100m on a 5 year contract = £20m/year book value (cost divided by contract length)

Sell after 3 years and the remaining book value is £40m; so any price over £40m represents pure profit, £40m represents break-even and anything less is a notional 'loss', but still goes down on the + side of the accounts.

A player who has come through the academy has no 'book value', so sell them for 1p,  £1.00 or £100m and it's all 'profit'

Thanks for outlining this. Only reinforces the point that the owners would try and sell Mount and any other HG prospects. £70million of pure FFP profit will give them significant money to go again this summer. I would personally much rather keep the very good, young HG players than trust the board to spend that money wisely. 

Something like this would solve a few problems.

It's clearly a false rumour because it's way too good to be true. 

[kev61]

13 hours ago, Willian Dollar Baby said:

 

Poch's first job should be to get on the phone to Lukaku and convince him to try at Chelsea one more time. 

Poch's LAST job is to get on the phone to Lukaku.How about Lukaku getting on the phone to Poch and saying he is ready to give his all and get rid of his membership of deliveroo and just eat.

[kev61]

On 01/06/2023 at 09:29, Original 21 said:

 He threw away his chance to be a true Chelsea legend and future captain. That shows you where his priorities lie. 

I doubt he will crying in his soup.In today's game "Legends and priorities" don't exist except in comics .

Edited June 3, 2023 by kev61

[kev61]

14 hours ago, ROTG said:

Maybe it just a case of Mason thinks he has more chances of winning silverware at another club. 

 

It's my view it is exactly that.

[kev61]

13 hours ago, Bob Singleton said:

Buy a player for £100m on a 5 year contract = £20m/year book value (cost divided by contract length)

Sell after 3 years and the remaining book value is £40m; so any price over £40m represents pure profit, £40m represents break-even and anything less is a notional 'loss', but still goes down on the + side of the accounts.

A player who has come through the academy has no 'book value', so sell them for 1p,  £1.00 or £100m and it's all 'profit'

[CAVEAT: Wages obviously are included in FFP calculations, but it's simpler to explain using just the one variable of transfer fees]

If we sell a player for £100m where all of that income is 'profit', that allows the purchase of 5 players at £100m each on 5 year contracts.

As a club, Chelsea have generated over twice as much in player sales revenue than our nearest (traditional top 4) rivals going back the last 10 or so years; something which tends to go unnoticed given that it's our purchases that tend to make the headlines. For all the so-called mistakes we've made, we've often come out well, in FFP terms if not 'operating' terms.

Hazard (very much NOT a mistake) made us around £85m profit in FFP terms as he was in the final year of a contract that had already been extended. His (transfer) book value was in high single figures - not including his wages, which brought it to around £14m - so his sale to Madrid covered many a subsequent purchase. Add bonus clauses (such as Madrid winning the CL) and it was excellent business by Marina. Even 'failures' like Morata turned us a profit in terms of FFP. More recently Jorginho's sale to Arsenal provided us with an FFP profit... not huge, admittedly, but still "pure profit"

Hope that helps.

 

Correct. Most 'commentators' see the £550m+ spent figures and think "well they've got to sell at least £300m (or whatever) before they can spend again"

FFP is a different beast to the general profit/loss accounting system used to calculate the day-to-day health of a company or how much tax it may owe.

Let's be honest most people haven't a clue about the financial  side of things except for shite signings relative to their cost which is subjective.

[kev61]

14 hours ago, Bob Singleton said:

Hope that helps.
 

Sorry Bob it doesn't - not for me anyway -but I respect your right to waffle.

[Bob Singleton]

2 hours ago, kev61 said:

Let's be honest most people haven't a clue about the financial  side of things except for shite signings relative to their cost which is subjective.

 

2 hours ago, kev61 said:

Sorry Bob it doesn't - not for me anyway -but I respect your right to waffle.

 

[Bison]

Personally think he wants to sign somewhere else as a free agent and get a big sign on bonus. 

Three contracts rejected with the new owners and one with the previous. Enough is enough, get what you can and move on. 

[Box of Tricks]

Not that bothered if he goes in all honesty - it feels like he's tailed off, he doesn't have a position nailed down and ultimately, I don't think he's where we need him to be to build a title challenging first eleven around. I would have liked to have seen him in a three man midfield more often, but I think we can comfortably improve on him/assemble a better midfield and attack while we're still transfer market friendly.

However, I'm intrigued by what's been going on in the past eighteen months. Without saying too much, I think he's being used as a cash cow. Everyone knows he's media friendly, etc, but there seems to be an entire machine behind him.

By all accounts, he's a lovely person, but I feel he's a people pleaser being taken advantage of/being milked for all he's worth. And while he's perfectly accepting of the situation and it's doing wonders for Mason Mount "The Brand", I think it's slowly killing Mason Mount "The Player".

On a similar note, United is the Hollywood move, Liverpool is the compatibility move. I think it will be very telling where he ends up.

[Bob Singleton]

31 minutes ago, Box of Tricks said:

[SNIP]

On a similar note, United is the Hollywood move, Liverpool is the compatibility move. I think it will be very telling where he ends up.

There are only a few clubs, even in England, who can afford the sort of wages it's claimed Mount wants.

Newcastle possibly could afford him (both fee + wages) but will look elsewhere for better value options - notwithstanding that Mount would be unlikely to want to go that far North East!

Man City; who don't need him, with de Bruyne, Grealish, Foden and others already in their squad.

Man Utd, who actually do need a player like Mount

Outside of England, PSG and Madrid could afford him, though the latter certainly don't need him. Possibly Bayern at a push, but again, they're not in desperate need of a player like Mount.

I'm yet to be convinced by anyone that either Arsenal or Liverpool could afford Mount when considering the likely fee and wages.

There's a reason why Man Utd are the current favourites to sign him - now that they've thrown their hat into the ring - and talk of Liverpool and Arsenal has subsided.

[xceleryx]

 

1 hour ago, Bison said:

Personally think he wants to sign somewhere else as a free agent and get a big sign on bonus. 

Three contracts rejected with the new owners and one with the previous. Enough is enough, get what you can and move on. 

Tacking onto this.

• Club insists they've done everything possible but Mount has been unwilling to engage, all discussions have been left to his reps.
• Mount appointed Neil Fewings from Roof as an intermediary, who has links to the northwest. 
• Chelsea haven't given up trying to agree new terms and are willing to run down Mount's contract if asking price isn't met. 

Edited June 3, 2023 by xceleryx

[Max Fowler]

 

 

[xceleryx]

3 minutes ago, Max Fowler said:

 

 

Not that Ben Jacobs knows much of anything anyway, but of course Mount's PR team are going to try and say it isn't about money. In terms of reasons to leave, that's arguably the one that paints Mount the most negatively. 

[Mark Kelly]

[Chelsea_Matt]

1 hour ago, Box of Tricks said:

Not that bothered if he goes in all honesty - it feels like he's tailed off, he doesn't have a position nailed down and ultimately, I don't think he's where we need him to be to build a title challenging first eleven around. I would have liked to have seen him in a three man midfield more often, but I think we can comfortably improve on him/assemble a better midfield and attack while we're still transfer market friendly.

However, I'm intrigued by what's been going on in the past eighteen months. Without saying too much, I think he's being used as a cash cow. Everyone knows he's media friendly, etc, but there seems to be an entire machine behind him.

By all accounts, he's a lovely person, but I feel he's a people pleaser being taken advantage of/being milked for all he's worth. And while he's perfectly accepting of the situation and it's doing wonders for Mason Mount "The Brand", I think it's slowly killing Mason Mount "The Player".

On a similar note, United is the Hollywood move, Liverpool is the compatibility move. I think it will be very telling where he ends up.

It’ll be United I reckon.

[Sleeping Dave]

On 02/06/2023 at 12:19, Willian Dollar Baby said:

This one is going  to hurt. It's looking more and more likely Mason is off. From what I've read the new ownership offered him a verbal contract which he was happy with prior to the World Cup, then the contract ended up being significantly lower than agreed. 

Now Alex Goldberg is not exactly my cup of tea but he does have contact with the Mount family having had Mason and his dad on his podcast. My gut feeling is that we are pushing him out rather than vise versa. 

It's clear we need to sell at least around 10 players if we can. Unfortunately many of them are on high wages and we will struggle to get much in the way of transfer fees. Mount is our most sellable asset and from FFP purposes could help pay for the summer window. 

Also seems like Chalobah and RLC are off too. Chalobah in particular is a very valuable asset, can cover three positions and doesn't kick up a fuss when he's not first choice every week. I doubt his wages are that high either. He is the perfect squad player, except we are now stuck with the unsellable KK on a long term contract. This is the real cost to that terrible summer window last season. RLC is another who can cover a few positions and is a solid back up. We'll now end up spending big on replacements down the line. The best decision we could make is to either loan out KK or cancel his contract. 

Same with Cucurella. How is there going to be space for Hall or Maatsen to come through if we've got a £60 million waste of space on high wages who can't be shifted? 

Gallagher and Colwill, another 2 who would bring in big fees. Maybe we should ask ourselves why these young homegrown players are so sought after? 

I'm worried we will continue to throw away the best academy generation we've ever seen, and rip the soul out of the team. Tammy, Christensen, Tomori, Guehi and Ake would all be an upgrade on who we've replaced them with.  

One question for anyone unfortunate enough to have been to the Bridge much recently (I have no shame in saying I skipped all of our games after Arsenal), Has the crowd been singing for Mount at all?

Back when CHO was rumoured to be leaving we all got behind him and eventually he signed a new deal. I am keen to know how aware Boehly is of the potential backlash they face if Mount ends up at a rival. I'm concerned they pay too much attention to Twitter and have no idea just how loved he is by the fans. 

Finally someone who sees it the way I do. We’ve a few years of history selling academy players and replacing them with expensive imports who aren’t any better. No wonder we are left with a bunch of mercenaries who can’t be bothered and who’s more interested looking cool on instagram. 

If we could only roll back a few seasons and not sell Tomori, Guehi, Abraham and the likes…