Mason Mount won the foul and converted the penalty that helped Chelsea register a draw away at Southampton but the midfielder was left disappointed with what he felt were two dropped Premier League points.
The Blues dominated the possession statistics once again but clear-cut chances were shared evenly between Thomas Tuchel’s men and the hosts, with Saints defender Jannik Vestergaard going closest to snatching a late winner when his header came back off the crossbar.
Mount echoed his manager’s assessment of the game in that a lack of final-third creativity was to blame for our failure to win, although he also felt the team started the game too slowly as well.
‘We look at it as two points dropped,’ he stated shortly after the final whistle. ‘We’ve been playing good stuff, getting good results and I feel like we need to be winning these games if we want to be pushing and fighting to finish as high as we can.
‘We controlled the game and had a lot of possession but we just weren’t at it in the final third. The link-up wasn’t really there, we weren’t creating the chances and sometimes that can happen, especially with an early kick-off where it takes some time to get going.
‘In the second half, we were a bit more on it and maybe could have scored more with the chances that we had. We need to look at what we did wrong, where we can be better, which was in a lot of places today, and try to improve every day.’
The 22-year-old assumed penalty-taking responsibilities in the absence of Jorginho, confidently converting to net at St Mary’s for the second season running. It always means something special for the boyhood Portsmouth supporter to score against the Saints and this was no different, though he admitted he might not have had the chance had things turned out differently.
‘Tammy was actually taking the first one but obviously he went off at half-time so it was either me or Timo,’ Mount revealed.
‘The manager said it should be whoever feels confident on the pitch so I just stepped up. I missed my last one at Tottenham in the Carabao Cup so I wanted to make it right and I was confident in scoring as well.
‘I’ve said before that it does mean a little bit more to me [to score against Southampton] and I scored here last season as well so it’s a nice ground for me to play at but the most important thing is to get the three points and we didn’t manage to do that so it’s obviously a disappointment.’
Atletico Madrid, Manchester United and Liverpool are the next three opponents for Tuchel’s men, a run Mount believes could be significant in how our season pans out. He hopes to be involved throughout ‘a massive couple of weeks’, despite being pictured nursing some ice on his knee after the game at St Mary’s.
‘It’s just a little knock,’ the youngster said, ‘a bit of bruising but I’ll be fine. Nothing can stop me.
‘We spoke a bit about it before the game, saying we need to go into these next three or four weeks really focused,’ he continued on the run of difficult fixtures ahead. ‘We have some massive games coming up that can really push us in the right direction so we’re very excited.
‘These are the games we want to play in - big Champions League games, big Premier League games against top clubs so we’re very excited and we’re looking forward to them.’