Gary Cahill is on the Chelsea preseason tour in his role as an ambassador to help promote the club, but they won’t have been particularly happy with his quotes today.
He was put on the spot about the hottest topic in the Chelsea-sphere right now: the future of Conor Gallagher.
The midfielder is into the last year of his contract, and the club are desperate to sell him rather than see him walk away for free as players like Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen did in the summer of 2022. So they’ve all they can to sell him, but haven’t been able to persuade him to leave.
So it seems they’ve gone nuclear, and have threatened to ban him from first team training if he doesn’t accept the Atletico Madrid offer that’s on the table. It’s a horrible turn of events, and most Chelsea fans (even those who don’t particularly rate him as a player) are a little uncomfortable about the direction of travel.
Former defender clear on what he wants to see
Cahill was like most of us in his take on things:
“I cant speak on behalf of the club but I can have my own opinion,” he said. “From the outside looking in, I would love him to stay,” Cahill said in quotes picked up by the Athletic.
“Since he broke into this Chelsea team, we’ve seen the managers playing him, giving him the responsibility of having the armband, clearly seeing day in, day out what he brings. That’s why they’re playing him and that’s why they’re giving him such a big role, a responsible role, at that age.
“So I think he epitomises a lot of the kind of the way he sets the tempo, the way he presses, his attitude. Everything that I’ve heard and know about him, I really like. Aside from that, he’s a top player. So in my opinion, I’ve got a lot of time for him.”
There isn’t much more to be said on the whole affair. Gallagher “epitomises” what you want to see from a Chelsea player, yet he’s being forced out.
Misleading headline. Insinuates the pending sale of a homegrown player is what “epitomises” CFC when that’s not what Cahill was saying at all. Typical “yellow journalism” from SuperFrank.