Mason Mount is starting to lose the faith of the Chelsea fanbase due to his deteriorating contract negotiation process and has definitely not been helped by a picture with Virgil van Dijk going viral. The Englishman is reportedly close to leaving his boyhood club in the summer after failing to finalize a new deal.
Mount reportedly wants a major wage increase for a new contract and doesn’t want to commit to the huge seven-year contracts that the club has been dishing out lately.
If unable to sign a new deal before the summer, the Englishman could be allowed to leave as Chelsea want to avoid letting him leave for free next year – as they did with Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen last summer.
Amid all this drama, Chelsea fans are losing their patience with their academy graduate and the majority are slamming him for his overzealous demands, despite being relatively poor all season long.
Things really haven’t been helped by a picture that is doing the rounds showing Mount and Liverpool defender Van Dijk together.
Mount and Van Dijk
With the questions around his future getting even graver, it’s been rumored that Liverpool has an active interest in possibly signing Mount if he’s available in the summer. The Englishman himself has not given any indication on whether he’d want to play for Chelsea’s rivals as negotiations continue with Chelsea.
However, some of the London club’s fans believe that he might be preparing for a move to Anfield after the picture of him and Van Dijk hanging out was unveiled. The picture shows the two wearing casual clothes in some kind of hotel or restaurant talking with other people.
Some of the more paranoid fans would probably think ‘agent Van Dijk’ is trying to convince Mount to join Liverpool by meeting him in private. But this isn’t the case at all, because this picture is from someplace elsewhere altogether.
The truth behind the recently surfaced photo
The reality behind this picture that is doing the rounds is that it wasn’t even taken this year, be it anytime soon. As a matter of fact, it was taken before the Qatar World Cup started in November.
Van Dijk and Mount both participated in the tournament as part of the Netherlands and England national teams. Before the tournament, many prominent names had to take part in media interactions and interviews where they spoke about how they felt about playing in Qatar and their thoughts about the massive tournament.
Incidentally, Mount and Van Dijk were put in one such interaction event together and were part of a joint interview with global private members social club ‘Soho House’.
None of the two players even posted this picture on their social media profiles. But some fans trying to cause trouble and demean Mount circulated it around Twitter to fool Chelsea fans into thinking that Mount is discussing a move to Liverpool with Van Dijk.
That is not the case at all, because the Englishman is currently laying low while his representatives sort out his contract situation. There is a chance that Mount leaves Chelsea in the summer and perhaps joins Liverpool, but this particular meeting with Van Dijk isn’t the ‘origin’ story for that possibility at all.