I just don't see where he ever fitted in
We had a lot of other holes to fill, so it wasn’t the right signing to make at that time. At all. But I do reject the notion that is implied here, that a player has to be signed for where they “fit in” to the first xi. A top club is playing 55-65 games a season. It’s a squad game. Having a quality homegrown player like Mount in the squad is not something that I call a problem. When fit, he doesn’t have to always start. And when he does, he can play several positions. City have players like Grealish and Foden on the bench half the time, and we can’t have Mount? These days you really need two quality players in every position and Mount covers AM, LF and potentially even RW. He’s yet to really prove himself as a viable 8, but in reality he only played a handful of games. So it’s too early to judge. So I don’t really agree with this “where does he fit in?” Sentiment, because the answer is….a lot of places.
Imagine for example that Bruno goes down for a couple of months. Mount is a ready made replacement, and good enough that if he hits his top form, could make the position his own. That’s the sort of competition for places a good squad needs.
Reality is that we should’ve signed a 6/8 before we signed Mount, but we didn’t; and now he’s here, there are plenty of ways he can be a valuable squad member. It’s almost quaint these days to think of teams having a first xi. The really good teams have about 15-16 players who are all good enough to be considered starters. And another 6-8 who are good enough to push for contention.
There’s no doubting in my mind that if we’d signed Rice and Olise instead of Mount and Antony, we’d have spent about the same, and be much much better off; but the past is the past. We have a new regime coming in now, so hopefully the decision making will improve.
People forget that Mount just turned 25 a couple of weeks ago. He should have his best years ahead of him.