Chelsea midfielder Mason Mount can equal a Premier League record for English players on Thursday night when the Blues play host to Leicester City at Stamford Bridge.
Thomas Tuchel’s side secured a sport in next season’s Champions League group stages on Monday night following Arsenal ’s 2-0 defeat away to Newcastle United at St James’ Park. A win in either of their final two games of the campaign against Leicester and Watford would ensure that they finish in third place in the Premier League table, with north London rivals Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal competing against each other for fourth spot.
Due to scheduling and fixture rearrangements, Tuchel’s side still have two games left this season, with both being at Stamford Bridge in the coming days. Both matches give Mount a chance to achieve something done only twice before by English players in Premier League history.
Mount is having his best season yet for Chelsea. With 11 goals and ten assists, the Blues academy product is one of only three players in this season’s top-flight to reach double figures for goals and assists alongside Liverpool ’s Mohamed Salah and West Ham United’s Jarrod Bowen.
Of those direct goal contributions, in six of his 31 Premier League appearances, Mount has scored and provided an assist. The record for the most times scoring and creating a goal in the same game in one season by English players is seven, a feat achieved by past and current England captains Alan Shearer and Harry Kane.
Shearer achieved this in the 1994/95 season en route to helping Blackburn Rovers winning the Premier League title for the first and only time in their history. Kane meanwhile matched Shearer last season in a campaign where he became the second player in the Premier League to scorer the most goals and provide the most assists in the same season after Andy Cole.
Will Mason Mount match Alan Shearer's and Harry Kane's record? Have your say in the comments section.
The record that Mount is close to matching comes just days after suffering Wembley heartache for a sixth time in his still fledgling career. On Saturday, Mount was one of two players to miss penalties for Chelsea as they lost the FA Cup final to Liverpool, three months after the same result in the Carabao Cup final against the same opponents.
Mount’s record in cup finals at Wembley is a poor one. Saturday’s was his fourth defeat there with Chelsea following the two this year and FA Cup finals in 2020 and 2021. He also lost the 2019 Championship play-off final there with Derby County, as well as the final of EURO 2020 with England.
For the Blues, their final two games on home soil could be the last games that members of Thomas Tuchel’s side will play. Tuchel has confirmed that defenders Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen will be leaving on free transfers at the end of the season with their contracts not set to be renewed in SW6.
Club captain Cesar Azpilicueta, who also missed a spot-kick in the defeat to Liverpool at the weekend, has also been heavily linked with an exit to Barcelona this summer, as has Marcos Alonso.
Ahead of Chelsea’s meeting with Leicester, a repeat of last year’s FA Cup final, the Blues have welcomed back left-back Ben Chilwell to full training, having missed almost six months of action with a ruptured cruciate ligament injury sustained in a 4-0 win over Juventus in November.
