England boss Southgate hails ‘exceptional’ Mount

England manager Gareth Southgate has said the “exceptional” Mason Mount’s impressive performance for both club and country have proved Frank Lampard right.

Former Chelsea boss Lampard showed great faith in the midfielder, taking him on loan to Derby County, where he flourished, and then making him a key member of the first team at Stamford Bridge.

Lampard’s critics suggested Mount was a favourite and questioned the academy graduates’s quality.

But the 22-year-old has since become a key member of the team under new Blues boss Thomas Tuchel – and also in the national team.

Mount scored a superb goal to clinch England’s 2-0 victory in the second of the week’s World Cup qualification games, against Albania, having starred in the 5-0 thumping of San Marino on Thursday.

His appearance against Albania was his 48th in total already this season and brought him his ninth goal.

Southgate suggested Mount was becoming undroppable and said he had looked after the versatile midfielder by only playing him for 45 minutes against San Marino.

“As for his load coming into the camp, he didn’t play in the midweek in the Champions League [against Atletico Madrid],” Southgate added.

“But regardless of that, we are trying to win and qualify for a World Cup and I can’t be constantly thinking about rotating the squad.

“Mason is a very good player. I was saying this in the autumn.

“But I suppose now Thomas Tuchel is picking him everyone will agree. When it was Frank Lampard, it didn’t count for some reason.

“He is exceptional; he finds space intelligently, he manipulates the ball very well, he creates chances and he scores goals. I thought his performance was excellent.”

Mount seems a certain starter when England take on Poland at Wembley on Wednesday.

Southgate said: “We’ve got a lot of players missing and we’ve tried to protect our forward players through that first part of the week. Now we have just got to try and win the games.”