Mason Mount has been criticised for “disappearing” as Chelsea slumped to a miserable Champions League defeat to Dinamo Zagreb.
Thomas Tuchel ’s men opened up their latest venture into Europe in the worst possible way by falling to the Croatian outfit - Mislav Oršić scoring the winning goal for the hosts. It was a thoroughly underwhelming performance from the Blues in all as their inconsistent start to the new campaign continues. Whilst not many came out of the clash in Zagreb with credit, academy graduate Mount was the target of particularly scathing criticism from former Blue Frank Leboeuf.
Speaking to ESPN, he said: “I want to talk about Mason because we never talk about him because he’s the little boy from Chelsea.
“But he disappeared! I’m sorry, Mason disappeared. I want to know where he is. He’s fantastic, a great player but his involvement in the game was not enough. That was an appalling performance against a very average team.”
Chelsea have now lost three of their opening seven games of the campaign this season, with Mount in particular struggling to get going. The 23-year-old has started in six out of those matches but has failed to register a goal or an assist as of yet.
He gave his verdict of the defeat on Tuesday evening and has called on his Chelsea teammates to improve after another underwhelming reverse.
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Speaking to BT Sport after the final whistle, he said: “We have to be brutally honest with ourselves, it’s not good enough. It’s the first game in the Champions League, we need to make a good start. I felt like we started the game well and we let it slip away and that’s happened over the last couple of games so it’s something that we obviously need to look at.
“It’s disappointing, it’s really disappointing. We had opportunities in the first 20 minutes. We were creating, we had a lot of domination with the ball camped in their half. It’s going to be difficult to break them down at first but if we kept going, I feel like the goal would have come.
“Lack of concentration and it’s too easy to give the goal away, we left ourselves open and they make it 1-0 and in any game we play, it’s very very difficult at the level we’re playing at to get back into a game when you’re 1-0 down especially in the Champions League.”
Chelsea now certainly find themselves on the back foot in the Champions League as they sit bottom of the group with fixtures against Austrian outfit Red Bull Salzburg and Italian champions AC Milan to come.
Tuchel’s side will be aiming to get back to winning ways at first this weekend as they take on West London rivals Fulham at Craven Cottage.
