Chelsea star Mason Mount is one of the Premier League's outstanding players, says Gareth Southgate

Rising star: Mason Mount
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Dan Kilpatrick @Dan_KP29 August 2019

Gareth Southgate says Mason Mount earned his England call-up 'on merit' but admitted he will use the upcoming European Championship qualifiers as an opportunity to plan for the future at right-back.

Chelsea's Mount and Leicester playmaker James Maddison have both been included in Southgate's 25-man group for the matches against Bulgaria and Kosovo on 7 and 10 September, respectively, while Man United's Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Aston Villa centre-back Tyrone Mings win their first call-ups.

Mount and Maddison are yet to win a senior cap having been included in Southgate's squad for last October's games against Croatia and Spain, but they have both started the season impressively, with Mount scoring twice in three appearances for the Blues.

Southgate said Mount had been included on form but admitted he was actively looking to the future elsewhere, with right-backs Wan-Bissaka, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Kieran Trippier picked at the expense of 29-year-old Kyle Walker, who has 48 caps.

"Mason Mount’s been one of the outstanding players in the league already this season, so we brought both [him and Maddison] in last October as much for the experience as anything," said Southgate, adding that he was keeping tabs on Mount's Chelsea teammate Tammy Abraham, who scored twice against Norwich last weekend.

"This time in particular, in Mason’s case, as the younger one, he’s in on merit. Simple as that. He looks like he’s threatening the goal every game he plays. I’ve watched him develop through our youth teams since he was 16 and he’s been an outstanding player at every age group. He’s not in on the back of three games at Chelsea. He’s in on the back of a year in the Eredivisie, which was outstanding; a very successful year with Derby [County]; European Under-19 champion with us. So he keeps improving and achieving at every level he is tested at, and that has been the same at the beginning of this season."

Wan-Bissaka has looked assured since joining United from Crystal Palace in a £50million summer transfer, while Trippier's call-up goes someway to justifying his move to Atletico Madrid after a difficult season with Tottenham.

"Wan-Bissaka’s adapted very well and very quickly to a high-profile move," Southgate said. "And playing in front of 70,000 fans, that brings intensity and pressure. We’re looking at him and Trent [Alexander-Arnold] and that’s the reason on this occasion that Kyle Walker isn’t with us. We feel it’s an opportunity to look at two young players. We think we need to see them quickly and we also wanted to reintegrate Kieran Trippier back into the group just so he knows that he’s still on our radar, and he’s obviously had a big - a huge - move to Atlético Madrid.

"It is an area of the pitch where we have a lot of quality. Kyle has started the season really well, so I’ve explained to him the rationale for the thinking. It’s not the case that he’s not playing well for Manchester City – it’s quite the opposite.

"We’ve got a depth of talent now because we’ve approached it slightly differently to look at younger players," the England manager continued. "It’s increased the pool that we can pick from, it means that we lack some experience in a lot of positions but we’ve got to keep evolving as a squad and as a team.

"But we can’t stand still and there are young players coming through that we might not see the best of in the next two years actually, but for the long term for England, we need to start integrating them because I think this team can constantly improve and evolve."

Tottenham's Harry Winks and Liverpool midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain also return to the group after missing the end of last season through injury but Dele Alli, John Stones, Fabian Delph and Eric Dier all miss out, with Southgate insisting that he has only picked players who have played sufficiently of late.

"I think Kyle understands the thinking and I have a close dialogue with all of the players that are in the squad and particularly those that aren’t in the squad this time," he said.

"I’ve spoken with all of them to make sure they’re very clear as to the reasoning why. In most of those cases they’ve missed a chunk of pre-season and the beginning of the start of the season, so that was pretty obvious for them. In a lot of those cases there’s no background of a 90 minutes yet, either in preseason or in the season."

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