Chelsea’s £25m transfer decision has divided opinion – but for once, the Blues are being sensible

If you want to find rational activity in the transfer market, then Stamford Bridge isn’t the first place you would normally think to look. But while yesterday’s report from The Daily Telegraph that Chelsea intend to press ahead with the sale of Trevoh Chalobah won’t have gone down all that well with many supporters it may, for once, actually be the right decision.

The Telegraph claim that Chalobah, who has allegedly attracted the interest of a diverse range of clubs including Bayern Munich, Tottenham Hotspur, Fulham and Nottingham Forest, is up for sale for a fee of £25m, with his home-grown status meaning that Chelsea could pocket the proceeds as pure profit, freeing up some space on the balance sheet to cover any shortfall they may face under the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules.

Only those in the boardrooms at the Bridge really know how much danger there actually is of a points deduction or other punishment, and only they know how much work needs to be done to comply with UEFA’s own financial regulations now that the Blues are back in Europe, but the fact is that it makes a lot of financial sense to sell academy products in the modern market.

That’s true of Conor Gallagher, too, and explains why they’ve been so keen to engineer a sale for him despite the apparent protestations of Mauricio Pochettino and the distaste of the fans – but there is a massive difference between the two players. Gallagher is a key component of the side who has held a rather awkwardly-constructed midfield together at times. Chalobah has been good. But he has not been indispensable.

Since returning from a recent injury lay-off, the 24-year-old has played some very fine football, scoring against Spurs and proving influential in a successful run-in, but while there’s no argument that he is a fine player, he has not necessarily distinguished himself above and beyond those around him.

Statistics don’t tell the entire story, of course, but they can provide a useful starting point – for instance, Chalobah’s tackle success rate is impressive but Axel Disasi and Levi Colwill succeed more often and Benoît Badiashile is only just behind. He blocks fewer shots per gane than any of those three, and only picks off more interceptions than Disasi. His pass completion rate of 89.4%, meanwhile, is excellent for a defender but still worse than Disasi, Badiashile and Thiago Silva (which is less relevant with the veteran Brazilian leaving).

And yes, there is more to the game than raw numbers, but they also don’t lie – Chalobah is no better than any of his immediate rivals for a starting spot when it comes to the key contributions that centre-halves are called upon to make. That doesn’t mean to say that he’s bad (he most certainly isn’t) but it is to say that he isn’t necessarily needed by a team which has players who can reach the same standards, and who also need to make at least some room for Wesley Fofana when he gets back to full fitness.

So selling Chalobah for a respectable fee (he has four years left on his contract, so £25m is scarcely outrageous and if Bayern Munich’s interest is sincere than that’s the sort of glowing character reference that keeps the price high) isn’t really outrageous when they his departure would impact the depth but not necessarily the overall quality of the squad. In fact, given the way the current financial rules work, it’s probably an actively good idea.

Of course, one half-decent plan doesn’t make a summer transfer window, and Chelsea do still seem dead set on selling Gallagher if they can get a decent fee, and that makes considerably less sense, especially given the high likelihood that the money would immediately be spent on a shiny new toy like Georgiy Sudakov or some Brighton player or other rather than on the type of sensible nuts-and-bolts acquisitions they probably actually need.

And it certainly doesn’t mean that they’ll actually allow Mauricio Pochettino to start making transfer decisions – indeed, there remains a chance that they’ll commit a far greater act of self-sabotage than selling any given home-grown player and fire the manager just as soon as he manages to right the ship. This probably isn’t the start of a sensible new dawn at Stamford Bridge, just one reasonable decision that bucks the trend a bit.

Losing any home-grown player always hurts a little, especially at the biggest sides who so often have few players to call ‘one of their own’ in amidst their vast squads of over-priced imports. But sometimes, it’s right to let go, and not only would Chelsea probably benefit more from £25m than from the player, but Chalobah himself might well find a club at which he can get the nailed-on first-team football he needs and deserves. This is one deal that does seem reasonable for all parties.