Manchester United suffered a disastrous season last time out and £60million signing Mason Mount is eager to put his injury woes behind him to help return the club to its former glories
Mason Mount says Manchester United’s players are determined to make up for the “hurt” of last season’s worst-ever Premier League finish.
United ended last season in 15 th place, their lowest finish since they were relegated in 1974, and missed out on Europe after losing the Europa League final to Tottenham. Mount’s two seasons at United have been blighted by injury following his £60million move from Chelsea, but he said he is determined to prove himself under Ruben Amorim.
“The whole season hurt,” said Mount. “But this is a new slate now. We’re looking forward to performing. We want to perform as a group. We know last season wasn’t good enough so now it’s about kicking on.
“Going away in the summer, you’re always looking at what you can do better, how you can be better for your team-mates and perform as a group, how we can all perform better. Last season it wasn’t good enough. We know that, but we’re kicking on now. We’re ready to put right that wrong.”
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Mount was out for four months midway through last season but returned to the starting line-up towards the end of the campaign and is determined to make himself a regular under Amorim. Despite United spending £133.5m on attacking duo Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo, Mount has backed himself to compete with them for a starting place next season.
“When you’re at a club like Manchester United, there has to be that competition there to perform and as a group we want to win and we’re all in that together,” said Mount. “The new lads who have come in have been brilliant in training so far and the first couple of weeks is never easy.
“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’ve been brilliant in training and we’ll be working together to get to that goal. 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 in the team.
“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.” Asked how long it took him to get over United’s 1-0 defeat to Spurs in Bilbao, Mount said: “Quite a long time. I’ve had quite a few losses in finals, so it’s not easy. It never gets any easier, for sure.
“But it’s about looking at what we could have improved on. In finals, little things that happen in the game, it’s like they have a bigger impact. It was tight. But it’s about looking forward now and really using this pre-season to work on a lot of things that maybe we didn’t get enough time to do last season.
“With the schedule, with the games, and with the manager coming in halfway through the season, this pre-season period is so vital for us as a group, to work on things.”
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