CONOR GALLAGHER is tipped to leave Chelsea this summer.
Just as he was in January, last summer and the January before that.
At some point something has to give and with barely a year left on his contract things are coming to a head.
Tomorrow’s clash between Chelsea and Manchester United is a timely reminder of how things have not changed at Stamford Bridge when it comes to muddled negotiations with players – particularly home grown ones.
Mason Mount is due back at Stamford Bridge nine months after being sold for £60m when he was in precisely the same position as Gallagher is now.
The symmetry is compelling and should be concerning for Chelsea as they prepare for yet another worrying summer of transfer dealings as they hover dangerously close to breaching strict spending rules.
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There is just a year in age between Gallagher and his old stablemate Mount.
Both grew up at Chelsea’s renowned academy in Surrey and saw off competition from within and from outside to force their way into the first-team set up at one of the most successful clubs in the world.
But with the change of ownership two years ago, came a change in priorities from above that coincided with a clampdown on reckless spending.
Most owners are thinking twice now about splashing the cash because of the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules.
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Not so Americans Todd Boehly and his sidekick Behdad Eghbali. A £1billion super-spend on an entirely new squad means the money has to be clawed back by other means.
Mount was the first victim of this. With roughly two-and-a-half years left on his contract, negotiations collapsed.
They never really resumed. And with 12 months left on his deal, Mount left the club he had served since aged eight.
The fee is logged as pure profit and it will be the same with Gallagher, when and if Tottenham finally do get their a****s in gear and strike a deal for the midfielder who has carried his team for a significant part of this stuttering season.
Gallagher is popular with the fans as “one of our own” – his energy, drive and ability to score vital goals in the nick of time makes him valuable in every sense.
Player transfer value is at its highest when they have two years left on their contracts. Mount slipped past that point and Chelsea have let it slide with Gallagher too.
Accountants can argue that £60m is a good price for Mount.
Unfortunately, he has been injured much of this season and needs to start paying back on the investment.
He scored his first goal for Man Utd at the weekend and football fate is primed for him to return to Stamford Bridge and do further damage.
What should have been the easiest contract in history to thrash out became a standoff and ultimately a bitter parting of the ways.
Chelsea have to make up their minds about Gallagher. It is evident that they set the bar too high in transfer dealings.
Demanding £50m for another academy graduate, Armando Broja, last January proves that.
He is now on loan and warming the bench at Fulham.
Although it was under the previous regime, Antonio Rudiger was allowed to walk away from Stamford Bridge into the arms of Real Madrid for nothing. Same for Andreas Christensen and Barcelona.
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Eghbali and Chelsea overlord Paul Winstanley need to get a grip and get realistic.
If Gallagher does not sign a deal this summer or is sold, it will be another stick for the already frustrated fans to beat the new owners with as they look up at their rivals from the bottom half of the table.
WHAT IS FFP?
SunSport’s Martin Lipton breaks down what it is all about…
FFP – or Financial Fair Play – is a concept originally introduced by Uefa in 2009, officially to prevent clubs from spending money they could not afford.
Yet many critics have rounded on the system, accusing it of being a protective instrument, drafted by the so-called “legacy clubs” to prevent insurgent and wealthier clubs from buying their way onto the top table.
The Premier League introduced its own FFP regulations which came into effect for the 2013-14 season and which, while less stringent than Uefa regulations, they do impact on club spending.
Under the current Prem “Profitability and Sustainability” regulations, clubs who are constant members of the top flight for a three-year period are allowed total losses of £105m over those three campaigns.
But it is not as simple as totting up outlay and income.
The biggest outlay, of course, is transfer fees. The 20 Prem clubs spent a total of around £2.4bn in last summer’s transfer window.
Yet that does not mean they “spent” that money as far as the Prem rules are concerned.
Transfer fees are “amortised” over the length of the contract, so, for example, a £100m fee for a player who signs a five-year deal is amortised at a cost of £20m per season for each of those five campaigns.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
