The news about Conor Gallagher’s move to Atletico Madrid being given the green light by the player came out exceptionally late last night – Fabrizio Romano’s Tweet came well after 2am.
But by 8am the rest of the world was waking up, and other top sources like Ben Jacobs were keen to jump in and add their own information to the story.
His Tweet on the subject was full of interesting details about what had gone down. It starts to paint a slightly more full picture of how things have happened in the last week. It seems that things really were on hold while Gallagher had his post-Euros holiday, but following his return to Cobham a week ago things started to speed up, and by last night’s deadline he had made up his mind.
Conor Gallagher is flying to Madrid today after agreeing terms with Atletico Madrid on a five-year contract. Chelsea have given him permission to travel and undergo a medical after clubs agreed a €40m fee.
Both #CFC and Atletico had given Gallagher until the end of the weekend… pic.twitter.com/p4vk0Bs3bb
— Ben Jacobs (@JacobsBen) August 5, 2024
Gallagher clear in his intentions
Jacobs confirms up top that Gallagher is flying to Madrid today to complete the move, with Chelsea having accepted a €40m offer from the Spanish side some days ago. The deadline of Sunday night was from both sides, who wanted to know sooner rather than later how they would have to proceed next.
The juicy by from Jacobs comes next: “two other top six clubs made enquiries in the last few days.” We’ve heard of Aston Villa and Tottenham interest in the past, but if it was them, why wouldn’t Jacobs just say so? The fact he’s hiding the names is curious… but perhaps it is just the two sides who had concretely been linked before.
Whoever it was, it was all a moot point. Gallagher wanted to either stay at Chelsea or go to Atletico. The Blues had a 2 year contract on the table for him, with the option to extend it by another year, but clearly whatever was in there wasn’t to his liking, and he’s decided to gamble on an exciting adventure to La Liga.
