Chelsea man has zero book value but is now priceless for Mauricio Pochettino

One of the transfer narratives of the summer was Chelsea and their quest to sell players with no or low ‘book value’ to clear the decks for those whose fee could be amortised over 427 years. Never mind the size of the transfer fee, feel the length of those contracts. Silly money was extracted from a desperate Manchester United for Mason Mount but no club – and Tottenham and West Ham headed the queue – would pay the rumoured £50m asking price for Conor Gallagher.

Chelsea fans should join Mauricio Pochettino in a chorus of ‘thank f*** for that’ because Gallagher – in an admittedly shallow field – has been their player of this curious season.

No player in the entire Premier League has won possession more often in the final third than Gallagher; only one player in the whole Premier League has made more combined tackles and interceptions. His book value might be nothing but his worth to Pochettino and his high-energy style is boundless.

To be fair to Pochettino, he had clearly been fighting Gallagher’s corner from the outset, saying in July: “Conor is in our plans, I was talking with him the first day I arrived. In football, things can happen we cannot manage. At the moment, I am happy with him and his performance, he has two years on his contract. We have nothing to say.”

Translation: If these idiots sell him then it’s not my fault.

In Gallagher, and in Mount had he had the option of keeping him, Pochettino would have seen a player absolutely suited to the energetic high-pressing, narrow attacking style that brought him such success at Tottenham. You can denigrate such players by talking about headless chickens, but when energy is allied with vision and intelligence, it can be dizzyingly potent.

Against Burnley, Chelsea looked like a couple of injured full-backs and a proper striker away from an excellent Pochettino side, and central to that evolution is the midfield trio of Moises Caicedo, Enzo Fernandez and Gallagher. The latter might be the odd man out in terms of a potential British transfer fee, but he has been the most impressive component; counter-intuitively, he is the oldest of the three.

We have long thought of Gallagher as a mini-Mount, but on the evidence of this season, apprentice has surged past the master, currently wondering if he made a momentously bad decision in pushing for a move to Manchester United. While he flounders, Gallagher is rabid out of possession and rapid in possession, making split-second decisions to change the pace of an attack and fluster the opposition.

His movement remains his greatest asset but he is adept at keeping the ball as well as winning it. He may not have the passing range of Fernandez or the direct running of Cole Palmer, but he is simply effective in the space between them. And sometimes ‘simply effective’ is the greatest compliment.

There was no surprise to see Gallagher’s name included in the latest England squad while Mount misses out; he has quietly become a permanent fixture, though it’s been 16 months since his last start in a disastrous 4-0 defeat to Hungary. To be fair to Gallagher, he was one of the few players to emerge with any credit at all from that sobering night.

It’s surely time to see him start another England game, with a friendly against Australia the perfect opportunity for some experimentation beyond Jordan Henderson and Kalvin Phillips, neither of whom is playing any meaningful football. Gallagher absolutely is.

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