According to ESPN, Chelsea are looking to sell Conor Gallagher, and Mauricio Pochettino has no say in the matter.
The club is justifying the impending sale as a Financial Fair Play exercise. Gallagher is a homegrown player who costs nothing and has a big weight on the club’s balance sheet if sold.
This is simply not how a club should be run. Of course, it makes sense for the manager to not have complete control over transfers because you don’t want to tailor a whole squad to the style of a single coach who can be fired at any time.
However, giving coaches no say over which of their important players stay and go undermines them and reduces their capacity to get the best results, which is the opposite of what you want.
Let’s hope these stories are exaggerating, because otherwise we could be dealing with some serious structural difficulties.
