Chelsea claim Gallas move due to ill-discipline

Chelsea Football Club released a statement yesterday afternoon in regard to their reasons for selling their France defender William Gallas to Arsenal and in answer to claims said to have come from Gallas after his move. The statement included that:

- Gallas refused to join up with the team in pre-season in the United States, despite agreeing the dates on which he would return after the World Cup. Jose Mourinho was said to have further promised Gallas that, despite not accepting an improved offer, he would still include Gallas for selection if Gallas joined up with the team on tour and "abided by the rules." Talks after this then culminated in Gallas refusing to play for Chelsea again.

- Gallas at first refused to play in last season's FA Cup semi-final against Liverpool, to push the club into offering him an improved contract, although he did start that game and had misjudged the header that allowed Luis Garcia to run on without anyone to challenge him and score Liverpool's winning second. He also refused to make himself available for and did not feature in this season's first league game against Manchester City at Stamford Bridge, which left four available defenders including John Terry nursing a niggling injury.

- Gallas threatened that if forced to play or was disciplined financially and/or otherwise, he would do something extreme and adverse to the team, including score an own goal, deliberatedly get himself dismissed or make a deliberate error.

- Gallas did not move to further his career, he was only interested in signing a lucrative contract, refusing an improved offer by Chelsea and therefore choosing instead to prefer that offered by Arsenal.


Gallas has responded by saying he did not make such threats about scoring an own goal and admitted he was determined in his wish to move and added he will eventually come forth with his reasons for doing so.

If all of these allegations are true, Chelsea must be content to rid themselves of Gallas, clearly a player unhappy with his presence at the club. Any club would wish to retain a player of Gallas' prowess but when a player is clearly unhappy it usually leads to their departure unless talks are successful of an amicable solution. For a player to threaten, much less actually carry out, to intentionally score an own goal or deliberately err against his current side is deplorable. Refusing to play is, in my opinion, surely a breach of contract?

Chelsea seemed prepared to carry on with business except for, in their opinion, Gallas still attacking Mourinnho verbally after leaving. Some have said the deal has done, business complete, Chelsea should let Gallas' words flow to, over and pass them. What I perceive from Gallas is that he has been unhappy for a while and the club have not accommodated him as he feels he deserved, yet refused to discuss letting him leave the club. It was only early March, nearly six months ago, that Gallas thumped the winning goal from outside the box, deep into second half injury time, against Spurs in the league and sparked a scene of mass celebration with Mourinho, the other players and the bench.

Was Chelsea right to issue the statement? Should they have instead ignored Gallas and consider him a disgruntled player? Are Chelsea fans glad to know of what potentially had occurred between Gallas and the club?




RedsMan.