The ideal £45m Mason Mount replacement is staring Chelsea in the face amid Man Utd interest

With each passing day, Mason Mount seems ever more likely to leave Stamford Bridge for good. An academy product with 195 appearances and a Champions League title to his name, he’s a fan favourite, and had seemed like the truest blue you could imagine – but with a £55m move to Manchester United inching closer to completion, Chelsea are unexpectedly on the hunt for a replacement.

The 2022/23 season was Mount’s worst in a Chelsea shirt by some distance – true, in fairness, of almost everyone on the squad. He scored just three goals in 24 games, his lowest ever return, and wasn’t linking up with the forward line in the ways we’re so used to seeing. Perhaps a fresh start will do him good – but it leaves his club with a problem.

Chelsea have no shortage of midfielder or wide forwards, but nobody who can really do what Mount does – finding the half-spaces, linking up with the attack, making darting late runs into the box to threaten the goal. Kai Havertz might have been able to do the job after spending the season as a stand-in centre-forward, but he seems destined for the exit door as well, with Real Madrid reportedly trying to tie up a transfer for the German international.

So where do Chelsea go now? Where will they find the kind of midfielder they need? The answer may well be a player they’ve already been linked with, and who has generated alleged interest from Liverpool and Manchester United as well - Nicolò Barella.

The 26-year-old Inter Milan and Italy midfielder has been hugely impressive in the last couple of seasons since signing from Cagliari. An incredibly versatile player, he’s played as a deep-lying midfielder and as a wide-man, but his best role is as an attacking central midfielder, and those half-spaces that Mount made his own at Stamford Bridge are exactly where he operates.

While he isn’t identical tactically – he tends to start from slightly deeper positions than Mount, in a role any Football Manager aficionado would recognise as a right-sided mezzala – he possesses many of the same qualities that the England international does, and offers a similar attacking threat. He also isn’t as adept in wider roles as Mount can be, but at the same time, wide forwards is not something Chelsea are short of at the moment.

Small in stature but blessed with immense stamina and a willingness to press and make tackles to win the ball back, Barella is technically excellent, a superb dribbler and a great link-up man who knows how to time an attacking run and how to recycle the ball around the edge of the area. When receiving the ball in deeper areas he’s also one of the best in Europe at making progressive plays, both with the ball at his feet and in terms of passing. He’s always looking to get the ball forward and is superb at it.

He’s also becoming more and more of a goalscorer, registering nine goals in all competitions this season – his best return to date – and ten assists. If those standards can be upheld consistently – and everything suggests that they will – then he replicates the goal threat that Mount provided at his best. To make him an even more complete package, he’s also a superb free-kick taker and could easily become Chelsea’s best dead ball operator.

The good news is that if Manchester United sign Mount, they will presumably be out of the picture for Barella’s signature – and Liverpool’s imminent purchase of Alexis Mac Allister means they will presumably step aside as well.

The bad news is that, with Inter in the Champions League final and having made the top four in Serie A, he may not be keen to move on at this moment in time – especially to a club that has just had one of the worst seasons in its recent history and is on the verge of a major rebuild. He also wouldn’t be cheap – with three years left on his reported £75,000 per week contract in Milan, reports have suggested a base price of anything from £45m right the way up to £70m. On the other hand, Inter’s eternally awkward financial position means they are a selling club, and could have their arm twisted – in which case they may give the player a little nudge to help him on his way.

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Chelsea were rumoured to have made an eleventh-hour bid for Barella at the end of the January transfer window only to have it rejected – but that is unlikely to put them off a return attempt. A lot depends on whether the player is interested – either in playing in the Premier League or in being paid an extraordinary amount of money. If there is any sniff of a chance that he could be tempted to Stamford Bridge, Chelsea have to take it – there are very few midfielders in the world who can do what Barella does and the level he does it, and one of them is likely to leave.