Blackburn Rovers are winning from sale of £25k-a-week star to Stoke City | OneFootball

Sam Gallagher joined Stoke City in July 2024 from Blackburn Rovers and has been curtailed by injury woes since

Sam Gallagher joined Stoke City in July 2024 from Blackburn Rovers to bolster the Potters' attacking options whilst Steven Schumacher was at the helm, but over a year later, he has played just over 1,000 league minutes in Staffordshire.

Having spent time in the youth systems of both Plymouth Argyle and Southampton, it was with the Saints where Sam Gallagher made his professional debut as an 18-year-old in November 2013.

He would make 18 Premier League appearances in his debut season, though only three of those ended up being starts, scoring once as he had to compete for game time with both Rickie Lambert and Jay Rodriguez ahead of him in the pecking order.

The Englishman signed a new long-term contract at the club at the end of the 2013/14 season, but would spend the entirety of the next campaign racking up minutes for the reserves.

Gallagher would head out on loan moves to the likes of MK Dons, Blackburn Rovers, and Birmingham City between 2015 and 2018, and would finally leave the Saints permanently after another full season on the bench during the 2018/19 season, joining Blackburn at the end of that season for around £5 million.

The former England youth international spent five seasons at Ewood Park before entering the final year of his deal, when Steven Schumacher and Stoke City came calling.

Stoke agreed a £1.5 million fee with Blackburn to bring Gallagher to the Potteries in July 2024, signing a three-year deal worth a reported £25k per week, making him the club's second-highest earner behind only fellow summer signing Ben Gibson.

It would be fair to suggest that Stoke haven't yet had their money's worth, and it looks as though they may never will.

Having made no less than 34 appearances in his first four years at Rovers, Gallagher made just 24 appearances in his final season at the club, spending a large portion of it out injured; for Stoke, this should have been a major red flag.

In his debut season as a Potter, Gallagher made just 22 appearances across the entire league season, with only nine of those coming as a starter, scoring three and assisting once as Stoke narrowly avoided relegation.

Tom Cannon, who finished as the club's top goalscorer last season, left the club in January after being recalled by Leicester City and sold to Sheffield United. He finished as the side's top goalscorer with nine, beating Gallagher's tally of three in one game, when he netted four past Portsmouth.

It appeared as though he had started to find his fitness towards the latter stages of last season when he made 13 appearances in the last 14 games, but a persistent calf injury has meant that he has yet to make an appearance this season.

Upon his return, he will have to compete for game time with both Manchester City loanee Divin Mubama and Slovakian centre-forward Robert Bozenik, and with Potters manager Mark Robins favouring a 4-2-3-1 shape, he may struggle for game time even when fit.

Despite his injury woes, Robins has praised Gallagher, saying, "He is an unbelievable specimen. If you wanted to build a footballer, that’s him. Sometimes he’s just so powerful, and we talk about him, that his muscles are too strong for his tendons. He’s so powerful that it can have detrimental effect because he’s quick, he’s strong, he’s powerful and he will give everything in every second.

"We’ve got to modify his game a little bit if we possibly can do but also we have to monitor everything that he does in training to make sure that we don’t overcook him but equally that we don’t undercook him.

"It’s a really difficult balancing act but when you’ve got an athlete like that, like a racehorse, you have to make sure you monitor everything you possibly can to give ourselves and him the best chance of being available."

Blackburn Rovers will feel as though they have dodged a bullet with the sale of Sam Gallagher

Blackburn will be watching Gallagher's injury woes at Stoke with a sigh of relief and be thankful that he is not still on their books.

The six-foot-four-inch forward made 238 appearances across all competitions for Blackburn during his six years stint at Ewood Park, inlcuding his prior loan spell, scoring 48 goals and grabbing 25 assists in that period.

Although never the most prolific, Gallagher's athleticism makes him a tricky opponent to deal with, so much so that under both Tony Mowbray and Jon Dahl Tomasson he found himself playing out on the wing, much to the frustration of Rovers supporters.

A large factor in this was to incorporate Sammie Szmodics into the side, who was best suited in playing through the middle, which paid dividends in his 27 goals and four assists during the 2023/24 season.

Blackburn will not regret the sale of Gallagher, who, even though they made a loss on him, gave five consecutive years of contribution at the top end of the pitch and likely would have lost him for free had they decided to keep him through to the end of his contract.

Stoke, on the other hand, must massively regret the deal which brought Gallagher to the Potteries, and will likely be unable to shift his £25k per week wages off the books anytime soon with a contract that runs until the summer of 2027.