Chelsea have been vulnerable to criticism since the moment Frank Lampard walked in the door. The Blues fans who loved Maurizio Sarri, plus the fans of other teams who are willing us to do badly, were poised to wade in all summer.
Those looking to tear down this new team got the perfect start when we were battered by Man United 4-0 in the opening game of the season, and the criticism was given room to grow further when we drew with Liverpool and then Leicester in the following week.
At that point, despite his goal against the Foxes, the knives were out for the supposedly “average” Mason Mount. Just take a look at this shower of Tweets – mostly from Chelsea fans, incredibly.
https://twitter.com/Lie_cann/status/1165229584180273152
https://twitter.com/FutboIanaIysis/status/1165230431702257664
https://twitter.com/Aelfetti/status/1163200557701619714
https://twitter.com/PanthersCfc/status/1163157100421402625
https://twitter.com/neelabjo_mufc/status/1163112176111931399
After all that, the midfielder stepped up and scored again against Norwich this weekend, with an even more impressive goal. These oddballs who are so keen to see Mount fail just to prove their own assessments of his ability be proved correct are really in trouble now.
The young midfielder has stepped up at every stage in his career so far, and all these Twitter eggs calling him “average” are now going to have to decide whether to actually support the players on the team they are supposed to support, or whether to just crawl back under their favourite rock and hope that Mason’s form tails off.