Chelsea FFP reality exposed by Conor Gallagher transfer plan after Everton points deduction

Tuesday night’s Carabao Cup penalty shootout success for Chelsea over Newcastle United was a rare spot of joy in what has thus far been a slog of a campaign for Mauricio Pochettino’s men.

Mykhailo Mudryk’s injury-time leveller forced spot-kicks at Stamford Bridge, with Mudryk, Cole Palmer, Conor Gallagher and Christopher Nkunku all on target from 12 yards to punch Chelsea’s ticket to the last four, keeping hopes alive of silverware.

It was another game where Gallagher impressed, the 23-year-old providing another industrious display in the centre of the pitch, his contributions with each game becoming more and more key to Chelsea at a time when their biggest ticket players, the £105million Enzo Fernandez and £115million Moises Caicedo, have yet to ignite in the way their price tag would suggest they should have.

But rumours around Gallagher’s future at Stamford Bridge continue to swirl with the January transfer window imminent, and links to the likes of Tottenham Hotspur have already been made, with a price tag of around £50million suggested.

One of the most important players for Chelsea this season, Blues co-owner Todd Boehly has been in attendance enough, including for the success against Newcastle last week, to know that it wouldn’t be a universally popular decision among supporters to sell a homegrown asset who has been outperforming many of the pricy pieces to the hugely expensive, and risky, puzzle that Boehly and Clearlake Capital are putting together.

Twenty years on from when Roman Abramovich changed the transfer landscape in English football forever, so, too have Boehly and Clearlake been responsible for altering it once more, with the £1billion-plus spend over three transfer windows far beyond what many had