Westham bid ￡47m for Conor Gallagher

Some surprise within West Ham at suggestions they have bid £42m plus 5m for Gallagher. First bid was £37m plus £3m in add-ons. They are confident they have edge over Spurs if Gallagher leaves Chelsea. West Ham also enquired about McTominay and made opening offer for Ward-Prowse.

Time for a little pre-season quiz: who is Chelsea's oldest current central midfielder?

If your answer was Conor Gallagher, a) you are correct, and b) this might be the moment to admit you are paying too much attention. It is a remarkable, surprising fact that underlines the exodus of experience from that area of the squad over the last six months and the strength of Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital's desire to build around young talent.

A little more than three weeks into Mauricio Pochettino's tenure as head coach, it remains unclear which of those two camps Gallagher will end up in. He was the only outfield player to last the full 90 minutes against Brighton & Hove Albion in the second match of the club's five-game U.S. pre-season tour in Philadelphia on Saturday, yet he continues to be linked relentlessly with a move away.

Chelsea are yet to offer Gallagher an extension to a contract which runs until June 2025, and it has been made clear to interested clubs that he is available for the right price. A package worth in the region of £50million ($64.1m) would certainly be enough to get it done, but a market at that level has been slow to develop despite the esteem he is held in across the Premier League. A source close to Chelsea, who will remain anonymous to protect relationships, said on Monday that West Ham United submitted a bid worth £40million for the Cobham graduate. However, Chelsea later rejected the bid. Now West Ham bid ￡42m+￡5m for this midfielder.

With such a lofty asking price, Chelsea are essentially telling his potential suitors they value Gallagher as a premium asset: a 23-year-old, proven Premier League performer and senior England international with considerable positional and tactical versatility and potential for further improvement. All of which begs the question: why they are entertaining the notion of selling him?

Gallagher is not pushing to leave. Coming from a family of diehard Chelsea supporters, his preference has always been to pursue a long and successful career at Stamford Bridge. That mindset has not been shifted by the endless speculation about his future, nor by the explicit acknowledgement by the club that he is regarded as expendable.

In the final days of this year's January transfer window, Gallagher was the subject of a £45million bid from Everton. Chelsea made it clear they were amenable to this offer, much to the bemusement of the player and his camp. Gallagher had zero interest in joining a team fighting for their Premier League survival, and the perception that he was being nudged in that direction did not go over well.

Newcastle United indicated they were prepared to bid at a similar level, and Chelsea did not encourage interest from a club who, with their unexpected charge towards a top-four finish, were establishing themselves as one of the west Londoners' serious long-term domestic rivals. The apparent concern about what he might achieve at his former club's expense in a more talented Premier League team jarred with their willingness to sell.

Gallagher quietly went on to crack 2,000 minutes of play for Chelsea across all competitions last season, ranking him ninth among outfielders in the squad. He maintained a record of featuring in at least 30 league matches in every season of his professional career — a reflection of the fact he almost never gets injured, as well as his impressive knack for winning the trust of his coaches. He has had enough practice, with Pochettino being his fifth different one to impress at Chelsea after Frank Lampard (twice), Thomas Tuchel and Graham Potter.

England manager Gareth Southgate is a fan too, offering an effusive assessment of Gallagher's game when explaining his inclusion in the squad for last year's World Cup.

“He's fantastic at pressing the ball,” Southgate said. “There are going to be moments in these (World Cup) games where we need certain attributes and we feel he could be that sort of player. He's not as experienced as some of the others but he has an impact in games and has a goal threat.

“When you look at midfielders you often ask: 'Do they stop goals, create goals or score goals?' He does a lot of all of that.”

Gallagher's technique does not pop in the manner of fellow midfielder, 2022 World Cup winner and January signing Enzo Fernandez; the majority of his contributions on the pitch are not glamorous and not always even that obvious. But he is adept at finding space in which to receive the ball, looks to move it on quickly and is a real asset in a modern pressing system. He also offers a genuine goal threat from midfield and his commitment is never in doubt — two things recent Chelsea history suggests cannot be taken for granted.

He may not be quite good enough to be an automatic starter in a team with serious aspirations to win the title or Champions League, but at the very least Gallagher profiles as the kind of homegrown stalwart that Sir Alex Ferguson frequently utilised to keep Manchester United winning on the pitch while maintaining a culture and standard of accountability off it.

That is not the sort of player to dispose of lightly, even for a juicy transfer fee. Chelsea's first-team academy core feels more fragile than ever with Mason Mount and Ruben Loftus-Cheek gone leaving summer, Reece James' knee a continuing cause for concern, Levi Colwill not yet fully convinced of his importance to this rebuild, Armando Broja feeling his way back from an ACL knee injury in December, Lewis Hall facing a challenging path to consistent first-team minutes and Trevoh Chalobah viewed internally as another saleable asset.

The early indications are that Pochettino recognises Gallagher's ability to be a valuable contributor.

He can barely afford to think otherwise with the Moises Caicedo negotiations with Brighton stuck at a £30million gulf in valuations, Fernandez being carefully load-managed after a 2022-23 season that saw him rack up more than 4,500 minutes for club and country and Andrey Santos, Carney Chukwuemeka and Cesare Casadei all still more promise than proven pedigree.

Banking £50million or close to it for Gallagher from West Ham, Tottenham Hotspur or another of his Premier League admirers might go a long way towards helping Chelsea shore up their central midfield options this summer — but would simply keeping him around not achieve a similar end?