Chelsea are now preparing to start life under Mauricio Pochettino without all four of their main midfielders from the 2022/23 season.
After Manchester United reached an agreement over a deal to sign Mount for up to £60million, it means he is set to follow N'Golo Kante and Mateo Kovacic in departing this window. Jorginho was sold to Arsenal for £11million in January and the core of the 2021 Champions League side is all but gone.
Edouard Mendy was announced as having left to move to Saudi Arabia; only hours later the player that scored the winning goal in Porto, Kai Havertz, had his own exit confirmed. The Blues are very much delivering on their promise to rebuild the squad that crashed to a 12th-place finish last season, but such vast levels of change is still unprecedented.
It has seen the exit of players past their peak, ageing, underperforming and also unwilling to commit to the cause under Pochettino. By hook or by crook things have been turned around off the field.
How this plays out on the pitch is yet to be seen. The pre-season tour of America starts in just over two weeks and the midfield is effectively non-existent apart from youth incomings and returning loanees. The injured Armando Broja is now the only senior player that fits the bill as an orthodox centre-forward. Marcus Bettinelli is currently the second choice goalkeeper and the activity is only just getting started.
The agreement to sell Mount, which football.london understands was reached on Thursday after three previous bids were all rejected, now leaves not only a gaping hole in the side but serious questions as to how and when the incomings will start to flow.
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When they do come, however, they are set to have some serious financial backing once more. Chelsea may well have spent over £600million in the first 12 months of the Todd Boehly-Clearlake Capital administration, but they have also pushed heavily into younger players.
Kalidou Koulibaly, bought for £35million and now sold for around £25million, and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang were both impulsive and misplaced purchases. The jury is still out on 28-year-old Raheem Sterling but outside those three, the average age of signings is 22.3. Only three of the 15 players included in this - not counting the free addition of Omari Hutchinson - are older than 23, with Denis Zakaria's loan being an outlier.
Marc Cucurella, 24, is the next oldest with Joao Felix, 23, the only other player above 22. In essence, the true value of most players is yet to truly be decided. With long contracts and plenty of time to settle the large outlay, Chelsea have already managed to shut out some of the financial issues headed their way with long-term amortisation.
By splitting the value of the transfer over the length of huge, near decade long, contracts, the yearly cost for even a world record shattering set of windows, is not as much as it may seem. Therefore, once the £218million worth of combined transfers is put into the equation, even with the June 30 soft deadline for sales, the blow is not as big as it could be.
At this stage it is still polishing the proverbial but it does demonstrate that it is not financially unstable for more large scale spending to commence. This is especially true when considering that only three main areas need addressing.
Although the midfield will need some serious surgery, the addition of just one main recruit in this area - with the number one priority still being Moises Caicedo - would be ample to kick start a youth revolution given the millions spent on Carney Chukwuemeka, Cesare Casadei and Andrey Santos.
For Chelsea, the sale of Mount is only likely to accelerate the pursuit of a transfer for Caicedo. As the negotiations for Mount have shown, when a player is set to leave the best case scenario is to wrap things up quickly. It allows all parties to find replacements, something the Seagulls have already done, as well as the players being able to settle in and have time to adjust to new surroundings.
The speed of incomings is now likely to increase rapidly for Chelsea, who are still yet to add to the addition of Christopher Nkunku. Nicolas Jackson appears to be all but a done deal whilst progress towards another youngster, Angelo Gabriel, is also being made.
It is Caicedo that promises to be the big-money attraction of the window for Boehly-Clearlake and Pochettino, though, and Mount going out only makes serious efforts to replace him in the midfield of higher priority.
