Samu Omorodion for Conor Gallagher should be the final straw for Chelsea fans

Chelsea have swapped an academy star who captained the club he’s been at for the last 16 years in a season in which he played more football than any other player in the squad for an eight-goal striker that 95 per cent of the fans will never have heard of before the start of this transfer window, who we’re 95 per cent sure will join 95 per cent of the £1bn-worth of Clearlake signings thus far that have been a complete and utter waste of money.

Mr Boehly, Mr Eghbali, you can shove your pure-profit peddling, FFP-swerving amortisation tactics up your proverbials, we – or rather I – have had enough.

Two days after it was announced that Conor Gallagher would be joining Atletico Madrid for £36m, Chelsea agreed a £34.5m fee with the same club for Samu Omorodion. It is, to all intents and purposes, a swap deal. Omorodion has signed a seven-year deal and his transfer fee will be amortised (split) over five years, while Gallagher’s sale will appear as immediate pure profit. Financially, it makes sense. But that’s where the logic to these transfers begins and ends.

Gallagher was the heart, soul and lungs of Chelsea last season. Cole Palmer stole the headlines but Gallagher stole possession to make his feats of absurd quality possible. Moises Caicedo was twice the player with Gallagher alongside him and the fans really took to him and his unparalleled exuberance, particularly in those dark early months of the campaign when he was just about the only shining light. With the Cobham lad storming around the pitch Chelsea still felt – just about – like Chelsea.

In May, on the back of reports linking Tottenham with Gallagher, the fans unfurled a banner of his face with ‘Chelsea since birth’ emblazoned above it, which was ironically also the phrase underlined above a list of names in Todd Boehly’s office, with eight players – including Mason Mount, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Lewis Hall and Ian Maatsen – already crossed out.

READ MORE: Ranking Todd Boehly mistakes at Chelsea: Selling Conor Gallagher makes top five

Had Gallagher been signed last summer the insulting two years he was reportedly offered in a contract to remain at Stamford Bridge would have been tacked on to an existing eight-year deal. Imagine the delight in Enzo Fernandez producing anything like Gallagher’s performances. The only reason he’s being sold is because he’s been at ‘Chelsea since birth’.

Enzo Maresca says the rules are to blame.

“This is not Chelsea’s problem. This is the rules problem. The clubs are compelled to sell players because of the rules. It’s not a Chelsea problem, it is a Premier League problem. The intention from Chelsea is not to sell – but the rules in the end make us. I love that [Franceso] Totti was at Roma for 20 years and a one-club man. I love that, we all love that. It’s the rules. My personal opinion is it’s a shame because we all like to see a one-club man. If we want to promote academy players – yes, change the rule.”

Any rule that sees a club benefit far more from selling academy players than anyone else is daft. We can all agree on that. But this is also definitely a Chelsea problem. The Rules didn’t force them to spend £1.2bn on players and managerial pay-offs. They knew The Rules when they were spending that money and have always been aware of the cost of those failed investments, but they pay no mind to the feelings of the fans and the academy products those fans are intrinsically linked to.

MORE CHELSEA COVERAGE ON F365…
👉 ‘It’s a problem’ – Chelsea boss Maresca fires dig at Pochettino as he laments lingering ‘habit’
👉 Chelsea and Man Utd in bottom three: Ranking the Premier League pre-season moods
👉 Chelsea: Maresca reveals what’s to blame for Gallagher sale as head coach demands ‘rule change’

It makes you wonder what their limit is. Just how much potential or talent does an academy product have to have before they’re considered unsellable? Would Chelsea currently be considering offers for Reece James if he hadn’t been injured for so much of last season? Real Madrid want a right-back. It’s hard to imagine them turning their noses up at £60m if it was put on the table right now.

Chelsea fans shouldn’t be waiting for that moment to come, because it will. The owners will currently feel as though they’re getting away with it. They’ve taken the Champions League winners to the Europa Conference League having bankrolled the signing of Palmer and a bunch of also-rans by selling the majority of the first-team players who truly know what the club means, and they’ve barely faced any backlash.

Clearly not enough for them to divert from The Project anyway, as the signing of Omorodion exemplifies on the back of fellow unknown quantities Marc Guiu, Omari Kellyman, Renato Veiga and Caleb Wiley also joining this summer. Who the bloody hell are they, you ask? Absolutely no idea.

Some might come good. Most won’t. And apparently they’re fine with that. I’m not though, and neither should other Chelsea fans, when the owners’ only way of realising their failing policy is to get rid of the players that keep Chelsea feeling like Chelsea, rather than what it is now becomgin: some franchised American play-thing whose roots are being periodically ripped out in the guise of progress that we’ve seen no sign of and shouldn’t accept anyway when it comes at such a cost.