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Mason Mount heard the criticism from Frank Lampard and he took it as a personal affront and a challenge. The chips were down at Chelsea after the 1-0 home defeat to Bournemouth on the Saturday before last and Lampard had dwelt on the timidity of his players in possession.
“Some responsibility is on the players to excite the fans – to have the personality and the balls to take the ball in an area and beat someone or play forwards,” he said.
The pressure was on at Tottenham on Sunday, with the Bournemouth result making it Chelsea’s fourth defeat in five Premier League games. The team’s hold on fourth place was in jeopardy. There were questions about Mount and his young teammates. There were questions of Lampard.
What was needed were cojones. Clearly, an effective tactical plan was a must but, first and foremost, Chelsea needed to show their character. That was exactly how it played out. Willian hogged the headlines after scoring both goals in the 2-0 win but Mount, in the other inside-forward position in Lampard’s reconfigured 3-4-3 system, was not far behind.
Mount showed for the ball, accepting the responsibility that Lampard had called for; taking risks and driving the team forward – and he was not alone. It was easy to tell that the manager’s words had registered by the way Mount answered a question about them. Plainly, they had been discussed during the week. For Mount and Chelsea, this felt like a turning point.
“That reaction was key,” Mount said. “He [Lampard] said after the last game that we didn’t have enough balls. We wanted to get on the ball and play – to show everyone we’re not a team who will get pushed over easy, that we have that fight within us. People were doubting us. But we knew the Spurs game could be the turning point. The [recent] performances weren’t good enough but this was the perfect game to show our mentality and belief.”
Mount stressed that in a derby it was imperative to win the physical and mental battles; to earn the right to play, although he overstretched the point a little when he said “the tactical side goes out of the window”. For Lampard, this was a tactical triumph and it would have felt all the sweeter having come against José Mourinho, his mentor when he played at Chelsea.
Lampard’s Derby beat Mourinho’s Manchester United in last season’s Carabao Cup, winning on penalties after a 2-2 draw at Old Trafford, but this was a higher level – a game with implications for Champions League qualification.
Lampard’s formation switch was perfectly judged and it seemed to surprise Mourinho. The Spurs manager, who had started with his preferred 4‑2‑3‑1, matched Chelsea after half-time with three at the back but, by then, Willian had scored his goals and the damage was done.
Mourinho had begun by asking his players to press high when Chelsea had the ball at the back; Moussa Sissoko advanced from his deeper-sitting midfield role to reinforce the line behind Harry Kane. Yet Chelsea simply played through them, with Mateo Kovacic showing some nice moves, or around them with long diagonals towards the wing‑backs, where Mount and Willian created overloads. Chelsea grew in confidence. They had the control.
Mourinho was sufficiently annoyed to suggest Lampard had played 3‑4‑3 because some of the Chelsea players were familiar with the system from Antonio Conte’s time at Stamford Bridge. In other words, the approach was not Lampard’s own work. “I’m not trying to clone anyone’s system,” Lampard shot back.
Mount noted Lampard had used the formation this season, including in the 2-1 Champions League win at Lille on 2 October. “You saw how tight and together we were as a team [against Spurs],” Mount said. “We knew where to be in terms of positions, the movements off the ball. That’s the important thing with a change of formation – everyone needs to know where to be, how to press and how to work off the ball because we came up against a team who are good on the ball. They had to go longer sometimes and we had to get back in and work off that second ball.”
The stain on the occasion came when the Chelsea defender Antonio Rüdiger heard racist abuse from the crowd and there were three announcements over the PA system to acknowledge that “racist behaviour from spectators is interfering with the game”.
Mount said Uefa’s three-step protocol, which he experienced when England’s Euro 2020 away qualifier against Bulgaria in October was disrupted by racist chanting, “could be something that is introduced in Premier League football”. He added: “It [racism] is still happening and there have to be things in place to stop it because it’s ridiculous.”
As for the football, Mount and Chelsea could take heart and the question, as Lampard put it, was whether they could “keep reproducing” such levels.
“We knew we had to stay in fourth place, give the fans an early Christmas present,” Mount said. “You don’t want to start falling back and having to worry about what is below.”
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