Conor Gallagher and Joao Felix transfers highlight Chelsea’s attraction to mystery boxes

There’s a scene in Family Guy where, during a meeting with a shady timeshare salesman, Peter Griffin is offered a choice between taking a free boat home or a “mystery box.”

His wife, Lois, makes it clear that she prefers the safe option, but to no avail. “A boat is a boat,” he says, “but a mystery box could be anything. It could even be a boat! You know how much we wanted one of those things.” He chooses the box, which on this occasion turns out to contain two free tickets to a comedy club.

This scene comes to mind a lot when we cover Chelsea’s deals under Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly. The club’s long list of signings over the past two years contains a dizzying number of mystery boxes: young, often unknown, often exciting players, full of theoretical potential, and lacking the reassurance of a more substantial professional body.

This also resonates with the events of recent days, and the effective exchange of Conor Gallagher and Joao Felix between Chelsea and Atletico Madrid, which brought an end to a surreal transfer saga.

Gallagher is a well-known player: a good – if not great – midfielder with exceptional motor, who never seems to get injured and who would naturally prefer to play for Chelsea. Joao Felix, even at 24 and on the cusp of his seventh professional season, remains an enigma.

What exactly is he? Is he a number 10? A wide forward? A false nine? A goalscorer with a pass, a passer with a keen eye for goals? A striker with game-changing skills, or a player who can generate decisive moments but doesn’t lead his team to victory to the degree that his best moments suggest?

None of these questions are intended to cast doubt on the undisputed talent of Joao Felix, who has dazzled Atletico, Barcelona and Chelsea. He has produced some truly dazzling displays during his six-month loan spell at Stamford Bridge and provided one of the few reasons to watch the team in miserable disarray in the second half of the 2022-23 season. If given the chance to spread his wings within Enzo Maresca’s system, he is sure to deliver more.

Joao Felix is ​​also significantly less of a bet on potential than Spain youth international forward Samu Omorodion, a player Chelsea initially wanted to sign from Atletico for €40m (£34m; $45m) after scoring nine goals in a single La Liga season for Granada and Alaves.

But now that the dust has settled, Chelsea have sold one of their most useful players of all time for 2023-24 for less than his maximum market value, bringing in a footballer who has long been a problem for Atletico – both because of his huge salary and because of his poor fit with Diego Simeone, who has already made it clear he loves everything about Gallagher.

Joao Felix won’t earn nearly that much at Chelsea. He won’t arrive at Stamford Bridge burdened with the pressure of a nine-figure transfer fee, as was the case when Atletico paid Benfica €126m for him in July 2019. Clearlake and Boehly didn’t agree on what it would take to sign the Portugal international permanently a year ago, and only returned to the table this time when more favourable terms were offered.

But while Chelsea’s admiration for Joao Felix is ​​legitimate and long-standing, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this deal is largely done because it enables them to sell Gallagher to Atletico, securing a portion of the net profit to offset the amortised transfer spend in this year’s accounts while avoiding the possibility of losing him for free next summer.

No one can reliably deny the close links between these deals. The conflict sparked by the sudden collapse of Omorodion’s move to Stamford Bridge has raised tensions but also exposed the need these two clubs have for each other. Atletico could not afford to buy Gallagher without a big sale after committing up to €95m to Julian Alvarez. Chelsea were not sure he would accept a move elsewhere and could not allow his situation to drag on beyond this transfer window, given their reluctance to offer him a long-term contract extension.

Joao Felix on loan at Chelsea (Steve Bardens/Getty Images)

But in reality, neither club has come away with any credit from the many days Gallagher spent in obscurity in Madrid or training alone at Cobham, and the cold accounting involved on both sides reflects “big football” in 2024 in a way that disgusts many people.

Beyond the commercial justification, Chelsea will argue that they have sold a player who they believe does not fit into Maresca’s possession-focused, positional style of play, and acquired another with a more acceptable skill set. They may have a point, though Gallagher has done everything he reasonably can in 2023-24 to silence critics who have suggested his value is diminishing in a team that dominates possession.

But even that is a form of doubling down on a more obscure choice. Maresca may prove a transformative figure at Chelsea, the best and brightest of a new generation of Pep Guardiola-influenced managers. But a season of promotion at Leicester and an impressive performance in the Chelsea interview process are a small but serious piece of evidence on which to agree a five-year contract and a club-wide investment in his style of play.

The mutual parting of ways with Mauricio Pochettino – a supremely competent and experienced manager who had averaged four top-four points in his last 31 Premier League games at Chelsea but who had upset the club’s leadership – was a bold enough decision. The appointment of Maresca to succeed him is the clearest sign yet that whenever results are less than ideal, the owners’ instinct is to bend rather than stick.

This drive also creates confusion at the team level, requiring tough choices among players. Recognizing that the transfer market rarely provides a perfect sequence of arrivals and departures, Chelsea have deliberately decided to put themselves in a position where they will have to sell large quantities of players in the rest of August.

The £51.4m ($67m) signing of Pedro Neto, coupled with the expected arrival of Joao Felix, led Maresca to make the “technical decision” late last week to leave Raheem Sterling out of his plans to face Manchester City, leaving Chelsea in an ugly public showdown with their highest-paid player that could dominate the final two weeks of this window.

Sterling has been left out of Chelsea’s squad for the match against Manchester City (Eddie Keogh/Getty Images)

It will be interesting to see whether Sterling ends up training with a growing group of exiles at Cobham including Trevoh Chalobah, who has more legitimate complaints about his treatment than most. He was signed to a long-term contract by that ownership in November 2022, and his only mistake was to reject several offers to leave in favour of competing for Chelsea’s future against the defenders who have been signed to replace him in the four transfer windows since then.

The curious case of Carney Chukwuemeka is also instructive. In his rare appearances in an injury-plagued 2023-24 campaign, he has shown an exciting talent in the Premier League. It is plausible that Maresca would argue after the City game that regular game time this season would serve his development better, but as detailed in this week’s transfer window, Chelsea will only consider a loan with an obligation to buy or sell if his release clause is met.

Chelsea’s desire for change stands in stark contrast to the widespread continuity at Manchester City under Pep Guardiola, Liverpool under Jurgen Klopp and Arsenal under Mikel Arteta, clubs whose continued success at Stamford Bridge is something Clearlake and Puel are keen to replicate. That is no longer a concern for Gallagher, who joins a well-established Champions League club where he is expected to be a key player under one of Europe’s most respected and celebrated managers.

His career is still on the rise, but it is difficult to say which direction Chelsea is going.

(Top images: Getty Images)