Conor Gallagher’s Atletico Madrid switch; shocking snub to Premier League pride

The Premier League 2024/25 season will be back in a few weeks. The clubs are doing their preseason and playing the friendlies as well. Chelsea has a new setup for the upcoming season with Enzo Maresca as their head coach. The Blues have not had the best of pre-season friendlies yet. They won only a single game losing two and drawing one. 

But the preseason does not always define how the team would play in the actual league. Amidst all these star midfielder Conor Gallagher has been in the headlines due to his recent transfer rumours. He has planned to leave the club in the ongoing summer transfer window. As per recent reports has agreed on terms with Atlético Madrid and is now set to fly to Spain on Monday to finalize the deal and go through all the formalities. 

Atleti reportedly set a deadline for this weekend to settle this situation. Chelsea had already accepted their €40 million (£33 million) offer, but Gallagher needed convincing to move to Madrid. He will be offered a five-year contract in the Spanish capital. However, they are also looking for Valencia star Javi Guerra. Now that the Valencia star has also agreed upon the deal, Gallagher’s transfer will be into a question. 

Chelsea is offloading Conor Gallagher to balance PSR

Now the question arises why does the Englishman want to leave Stamford Bridge? Under Todd Boehly, the club splashed over £1bn on new incomings. This has resulted in the implementation of profitability and sustainability requirements (PSR). As a result, to balance the books, the west London firm had to find another source of revenue in addition to selling hotels to themselves.

The club needs to offload some of the academy players. So Gallagher has been one of the options and is the latest academy player on the market who could fetch a high transfer value to the side. It may also explain why he has been barred from first-team training. It will be an interesting week coming up for the club and the player as well.