Mason Mount is backing himself in the fight for places at Old Trafford this season despite Manchester United spending more than £130million on Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha.
Both new signings play in the two No.10 positions in Ruben Amorim’s 3-4-2-1 system, bringing them into direct competition with Mount.
But the 26-year-old former Chelsea star is confident in his ability to hold down a regular first-team place after finally fighting his way back to form and fitness at the end of last season.
‘One hundred per cent,’ said Mount at United’s hotel base in Chicago on their pre-season tour of the US. ‘I mean, any time you do get that opportunity to be on the pitch, you want to do something. You want to affect the game. That’s always the way I’ve looked at it.
‘Any opportunity you get, you’ve got to try and take it. I’ll always back myself. I know what I can do. But we’re a team and we’re all working together in that.
‘Obviously with the new signings coming in, they’re going to elevate us to another level and we all need to be at that level to really perform.
Mason Mount ‘100 per cent’ backs himself to fight for a first-XI spot at Man United next season
Both Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha will compete with Mount for the two No.10 positions
But Mount insists he welcomes such competition and says it is natural at a club like United
‘It’s competition. When you’re at a club like Manchester United, there has to be that competition there to perform. As a group, we want to win and we’re all in that together. We want to perform as a group. We know last season wasn’t good enough so it’s about kicking on, as I said.
‘Looking forward, the new lads that have come in have been brilliant in training so far, and the first couple of weeks is not easy. So it’s about integrating them into the group and making them feel as comfortable as possible and I think we’ve all done that.
‘They know what’s coming with the Premier League and the games and how difficult it is now; what they’ve done in the Premier League already, the amount of goals they’ve scored, the amount of assists they’ve created, that’s exactly what we need.
‘We’re working together to try and improve that because last season we didn’t hit those goals or assists as much as we could have done.’
Mount has had an injury-plagued two years since joining United from Chelsea for £60m in 2023, making just 46 appearances and scoring four goals. But he was a regular after returning from a three-and-a-half month lay-off at Nottingham Forest at the start of April, rewarding Amorim’s faith in him.
‘He’s definitely given that confidence to me from the first day he came in, speaking to me, and I know what he wants, and I feel like I know how he wants the team to play,’ added Mount. ‘So, yeah, it’s been brilliant and definitely having the manager’s confidence in me to go out there and perform, it definitely helps as a player.
‘At the end of last season, obviously getting back and feeling really, really good, playing some games and having some goals and getting back involved in the goals was obviously very important for me.
‘Still, obviously, I want to kick on and we want to do that as a team. So, it was a positive end for me at the end of the season to get back and play some games. But, yeah, want to push on for more now.’
The England international has had an injury-plagued two years since joining from Chelsea for £60m in 2023, making just 46 appearances and scoring four goals
Amorim put his trust in Mount and made him a regular in the rotation at the end of last season
Mount scored three goals in the last month of the 2024-25 campaign and picked up form
Mount, 26, noted that the manager’s confidence in him helped him perform better on the pitch
Mount scored three goals towards the end of the season and also picked up three yellow cards in his desperation to make up for lost time.
‘I was getting far too many yellow cards for my liking! I think I’ve always had that in me. It’s just when you’re at the end of last season and I was coming back. At the beginning I was obviously not starting games. I was watching games and when you have that opportunity to come into the game, you want to have an impact and you want to get straight into the action. You want to do something. I got too many yellow cards and I had too many fouls.’
Mount has been taking extra care to try and stay fit as he looks for a sustained run of games. ‘Yeah, we’ve definitely looked at it in more detail,’ he said. ‘The small things matter massively in this day and age and in football now.
‘When you’ve had small setbacks, it’s about how you correct that and how you push on, and I think we’ve done that. We’ve looked at it and looked at why, and I feel we’re in a really, really good place now going into this season.
‘I had a good off-season and rested. I think that was probably one of the most important things, to take the rest. I slowly built up some sessions in the off-season, and that was from the staff here.
‘They give us a little schedule to work off and just build up on our training. The first message was to rest for the first week or so and then build up and be ready because when we come back to pre-season, we know it’s going to be kicking on and trying to get to the levels as quick as possible because we’ve got games here (in the US) and we’ve had a game already (against Leeds in Stockholm).
‘It can’t be a slow progression. We’ve got to try and kick on and get to the levels as quick as we can because, as I said, this game’s coming thick and fast and the next minute it’ll be the first game of the season, so we have to be ready.’
