It’s done. Tottenham Hotspur have formally announced the signing of former Chelsea and Crystal Palace midfielder Conor Gallagher from Atletico Madrid, where he spent the last season and a half. According to reports, the transfer fee is around £35m, which is honestly not a bad price for a homegrown English midfielder with 22 international caps. Gallagher joins Spurs after 18 months in Spain where he played somewhat sparingly, tallying 5G+1A in just over 2100 minutes in La Liga.
Gallagher is a player that was highly coveted by Ange Postecoglou before his first season, but Gallagher didn’t want to leave Chelsea for Spurs at the time and Chelsea DEFINITELY didn’t want to sell him to Tottenham. But Ange isn’t here anymore, Thomas Frank is — and it feels like Gallagher’s signing this January is as much due to Spurs currently having three available senior players who can play central midfield as it does with Gallagher’s playing ability or the skills he brings to the team.
Gallagher is a good player and despite what many people have insinuated in various comments on this blog dot com, I never once said that he isn’t. He will very likely improve Tottenham Hotspur even if he’s just a warm body, and he’s obviously not just a warm body. But it’s a curious transfer that may only be fully evaluated in the context of what else Spurs do in this month’s January window. Gallagher is basically an improved iteration of virtually every other midfielder Spurs currently have on the books — an Athlete™, good at duels, strong in possession, not a fantastic passer of the ball — in a team that has a giant gaping hole and desperate need for central midfield creativity. In the context of how appallingly constructed this current Tottenham squad is with regards to Thomas Frank’s tactics, it doesn’t really address Spurs’ needs and reeks of a panic buy from Spurs’ hierarchy. That doesn’t necessarily make it a BAD move — sometimes panic buys work out! — but it says a LOT to me about how there still doesn’t seem to be a plan for how to develop this team in the transfer window. I’ve been waiting to see how Spurs plan to build out this team to get it back into contention for Champions League positions. I’m still waiting.
That said, if Spurs land someone this month like, oh I dunno, Hayden Hackney or a Hackney-like substance who knows how to split a defense with a well-timed pass from deep, that changes the context significantly. Maybe that’ll happen. I sure hope it does! But this transfer does little to convince me that Johan Lange and the soon-to-be-departed Fabio Paratici, much less the rest of Spurs’ corporate hierarchy, have an established plan of how to develop this team going forward. THAT’S my criticism — I want evidence of a plan, and I am just not getting it with this signing.
Conor Gallagher is now a Tottenham Hotspur player. I have absolutely nothing against him personally and hope he does exceedingly well. I welcome him to the club wholeheartedly. Him playing, Spurs winning, and everyone shutting me up will make me the happiest Tottenham Hotspur fan in the world.
