Although Conor Gallagher probably doesn’t address Tottenham’s most obvious needs, the England international could offer plenty to Thomas Frank’s team.
After roughly 18 months in La Liga with Atlético Madrid, Conor Gallagher is returning to London and the Premier League. But having come through the academy at Chelsea and appeared prominently in the Blues’ senior side, he is now bound for Tottenham.
It’s unlikely a transfer that’ll endear himself to Chelsea fans who once appreciated his status as a homegrown player, but it’s another big move for the England international after broadening his horizons with a decent spell in Madrid.
And perhaps crucially for him, Gallagher’s imminent return to the Premier League comes with the 2026 World Cup on the horizon. After only earning a single England cap in 2025, his chances of getting into the squad for the summer appear slim, but he might argue that playing well in the English top flight gives him a greater opportunity.
Tottenham weren’t the only Premier League club in for him either, highlighting how his stock at home has remained high. Spurs, it would seem, have hijacked Aston Villa’s move for Gallagher as they look to improve their squad for the second half of the season after failing to impress for most of the 2025-26 campaign to date.
But while Gallagher would undoubtedly improve the general depth in Tottenham’s midfield, it’s been difficult to avoid the scepticism of some Spurs fans regarding this move.
A key frustration among supporters this term has been the lack of impetus and incisiveness offered by Tottenham’s most-used central midfielders, Rodrigo Bentancur and João Palhinha. While both are highly competent defensively, neither is a masterful distributor, and so there’s a sense Spurs struggle to effectively build through them.
That feeling is broadly supported by the data.
Tottenham’s total of 519 passes breaking the opposition’s midfield line is only enough to see them rank 13th in the Premier League this term. For passes breaking the opposition’s defensive line (87), they are joint 13th.
Those figures may not sound alarming, but you also have to consider that Spurs’ average possession share (50.8%) isn’t among the lowest, meaning their rankings for those metrics are boosted by how much time they spend on the ball.
So, when you look at their total line-breaking passes as a proportion of their overall passes, their rate of 10.3% is the fifth lowest, suggesting they play safe to a greater degree than most teams.
Spurs’ lack of incisiveness can also be seen in their frequency of through balls – defined as a pass intended on putting a player through on goal and leading to a goal-scoring opportunity by splitting the last line of defence. Their 11 through balls attempted and four completed are both the fewest in the Premier League this term, hinting that the marriage of passing ability and invention is at a premium with the likes of Dejan Kulusevski and James Maddison out injured. For context, Arsenal have recorded the most this season: 75 (24 completed).
It wouldn’t be fair to pin all of this on Bentancur and Palhinha, both of whom are effective in their own ways. But the hope among many supporters was Spurs would address their minimal midfield impetus in possession during the January transfer window. The addition of a talented ball-player, someone who could play through the lines and consistently feed into attackers while Palhinha or Bentancur does the dirty work, would’ve been well received. With Gallagher, a fine player in his own right, the worry is he doesn’t really address those needs.
Gallagher is tidy enough on the ball, his pass completion rate ranging between 84.6% and 91.5% across the last three and a half seasons of top-flight football – though that doesn’t really tell us a huge amount about the significance of those passes.
Unfortunately for Spurs fans, more detailed data doesn’t provide a great deal of evidence that Gallagher will bring more incision with passes from the centre of the pitch.
Across his three most recent seasons in the Premier League, Gallagher’s progressive passes per 90 went from 1.3 – the seventh fewest among midfielders to play 500+ minutes – to 3.0 and then down to 2.4. While the latter two – recorded while playing for Chelsea rather than Crystal Palace – suggest more forward thinking, he still only ranked 28th and then 44th among his positional peers.
Similarly, he’s never been a prolific passer through the lines, and through balls aren’t something he’s ever frequently provided. In fact, he attempted just three over a full La Liga season in 2024-25.
None of this will likely surprise anyone who’s seen Gallagher play at least semi-regularly, though, and therefore it seems clear he’s not been brought in to perform such functions. He’s never been a playmaker who dictates, rather a box-to-box workhorse or wide eight, so surely there’ll be no expectation from Thomas Frank for him to be a superstar six.
Arguably the quality Gallagher is most known for is his work rate out of possession, the industry he offers in midfield. The fact Diego Simeone wanted to sign him for Atlético in the first place should be seen as an indicator of this and a seal of approval, even if his role has been reduced to frequent substitute this term.
In the 2023-24 Premier League season, Gallagher averaged 44.0 high-intensity pressures per 90 minutes. At face value, it’s a figure that doesn’t look that impressive given 28 nominal central midfielders (1,000+ minutes) recorded more, but Gallagher was playing for a team who had 59.0% possession over the season; among the 28 midfielders above him in the rankings, only five played for teams who’d had more than 50% of the ball. That’s relevant because, generally, players for teams who see less possession tally more pressures.
A similar logic can be applied to possession regains. Gallagher’s 6.3 per 90 that season was a decent return in its own right, while only eight midfielders playing for teams with 50+% possession won the ball back more often.
He continued to be impactful out of possession for Atlético, too, ranking in the 78th and 85th percentiles respectively for tackles (2.4) and possession won (5.6) per 90 by midfielders in La Liga since the start of last season. In that time, Atlético have averaged 52.5% possession.
Gallagher’s athleticism hasn’t only manifested itself in impressive defensive output, though.
It’s worth looking back on what was probably his most impressive season in senior football, the 2021-22 campaign, when he was on loan at Palace.
Gallagher thrived in a box-to-box role, offering Palace plenty of off-ball presence but also influence going forward – perhaps not as a reliable creator, but runs, with and without the ball, into the opposition’s box were a common theme.
Only six nominal central/defensive midfielders bettered his nine shot-ending carries, while he ranked joint ninth among the same players for carries ending in a shot or chance created (17). Similarly, Gallagher’s 10 carries into the opposition’s box was enough to rank joint seventh, and three of those above him played for a Manchester City side who tended to dominate possession.
This part of his game heavily influenced Gallagher’s impressive haul of eight Premier League goals in 2021-22, and his high non-penalty expected goals (xG) of 6.4 (seventh highest among nominal midfielders) reflects the fact most of them came from high-value positions.
Even if you discount the solitary goal from outside the box (a glorious strike into the top-right corner vs Everton) and the one deflected effort against Fulham, six would still be a very respectable total.
His manager while at Palace, Patrick Vieira, suggested Gallagher potentially had the “quality finishing of a Frank Lampard” and on-field “passion” of the Arsenal great’s former Gunners teammate Ray Parlour.
However, since that season, he’s only scored 13 goals in 123 league appearances for Chelsea and Atlético. Granted, that’ll have been partly impacted by not always being a guaranteed starter, but that knack of being a goal threat is presumably something Frank will hope to rediscover the magic formula for.
But he’ll also be confident Gallagher can make Spurs a better team off the ball in the final third, too. After all, Tottenham have been one of the Premier League’s least-effective teams when it comes to pressing high up the pitch in 2025-26.
Their 122 high turnovers is only better than Burnley (116) and Fulham (88) even though Spurs do actively press high; their 11.2 PPDA – opposition passes per defensive action – is the sixth lowest of all Premier League clubs, suggesting they are relatively quick to begin hunting the ball after losing it. Their comparatively low number of high turnovers supports the idea Tottenham’s press can be played through, however.
It wouldn’t be surprising if Frank specifically wants to address this, given his Brentford side ranked in the top six for high turnovers in two of his four seasons in charge of them in the top flight, and Gallagher would be no stranger to such an approach.
While at Palace, for instance, the Eagles ranked eighth for high turnovers and Gallagher’s 19 possession regains in the final third put him just outside the top 10 among all midfielders. The Chelsea teams he featured in also tended to press high.
Frank clearly values pressing, Spurs just haven’t been very effective at it. With Dominic Solanke – arguably the best pressing forward in the league – now back in action after a long-term injury and the tireless Gallagher potentially supporting him soon, a change could be on the horizon.
Make no mistake, though, the optics on this signing are quite complex. It’s understandable that Spurs supporters might feel some trepidation because there’s plenty to suggest they could be a lot better at playing through the middle and not much evidence Gallagher will improve them in that respect. At least not in build-up.
But if Gallagher is ultimately part of a bigger plan to improve the midfield and is to be accompanied by a couple of other January arrivals – rather than being their only new introduction – then there’s plenty to like here.
He’s impressed in the Premier League before, he’ll bring leadership, a strong personality, work ethic and potentially goals, and he’s probably an upgrade on Pape Sarr with respect to his wide skill set, so he increases the average quality of Spurs’ midfield options.
With all that in mind, then, Gallagher’s signing probably shouldn’t be seen as a solution to what many see as Spurs’ main problems or even a statement of intent, but he could still become an important cog. In many ways, whether this is remembered fondly or not arguably depends less on Gallagher and more on what Tottenham do next.
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Conor Gallagher Will Improve Tottenham’s Midfield, Even if He Doesn’t Fix It Opta Analyst.
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