Cardiff City ruled out of Chelsea FC transfer for 'real talent' - £15m claim issued | OneFootball

FLW's Cardiff Fan Pundit has said that Omari Kellyman is unlikely to move from Chelsea on a permanent deal.

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more...

An impressive 3-1 defeat of Northampton Town at Sixfields over the weekend has helped Cardiff City climb back to the top-of-the-table in an extremely congested League One table.

Brian Barry-Murphy’s Bluebirds are at the top of the third-tier on 29 points, just two above sixth place Stevenage, with Bradford City, Lincoln City, Stockport County and Bolton Wanderers all still very much in the hunt.

Following their relegation from the Championship last season, Cardiff prioritised using their impressive academy setup to cultivate a squad that could re-energise the fanbase and also challenge for promotion with a fluid, possession-based style of football.

One of the very few signings that they did make, though, was that of former Aston Villa winger Omari Kellyman, who joined Cardiff on a season-long loan move from Chelsea.

Kellyman has been very impressive during his loan stint at the Cardiff City Stadium thus far, but our FLW Fan Pundit believes it is very unlikely that the club would be able to sort a permanent transfer for the 20-year-old attacker.

Cardiff would be unlikely to sign Chelsea's Omari Kellyman on a permanent basis

Cardiff have a very young squad but will be heading into the January transfer window seeking to build and add from a position of strength with regards to their status in the third-tier.

However, as FLW’s Cardiff Fan Pundit Matt Hall has outlined, a permanent move for Kellyman would appear more or less out of the question for the Welsh outfit. In Matt's view, the fact that Chelsea shelled out no less than a whopping reported £19 million figure for Kellyman's services from Aston Villa just last summer means the Premier League giants will not be looking to entertain a sale until they can make a potential profit on the gifted playmaker.

Indeed, Matt believes that Kellyman's value — at least in the eyes of Chelsea — may hover somewhere around the £15 million mark as things stand, which would naturally price the Bluebirds out of a permanent deal.

However, he could see Cardiff revisiting another potential temporary swoop for Kellyman if promotion to the Championship is achieved.

Matt says: “With Omari Kellyman, I don’t believe that he would be the sort of player that we would get in on a permanent.

“With the club in general, we are not really used to seeing our loanees become permanent.

“We do have a history of just getting them in and letting them go again. I think what we may see is a relationship develop between us and Chelsea if this does go well and this does succeed.

“Chelsea are not here to give us a deal, they are here to get profit on the books. That’s what we see, they make profit all of the time.

“If they have bought someone for £20 million then they will happily loan him until they make a profit on that on the books so I don’t think we’d be getting any sort of a deal from them.

“He does look a real talent. We do want to see him a bit more in his natural position of a number ten or a number eight, rather than out on the wing, especially when Ollie Tanner is back.

“I do think that he is the sort of player that, at best, we would try to get on loan again next season, especially if we’re in the Championship with it being a natural step up for him.

“I wouldn’t see a permanent deal happening, unfortunately. I think that given that Chelsea spent £19 million on him, they would be looking to make a profit on him. A book value of £15 million or something like that depending on how his development goes.”

Chelsea, Omari Kellyman deal was a coup for Cardiff City in the summer

Having been the subject of a £19 million move to Stamford Bridge in the summer of 2024, Cardiff bringing Omari Kellyman always had to be viewed as a bit of a coup.

He came through the academy at Derby County before joining Aston Villa in 2022, going on to make six first-team appearances for the Villains in the 2023/24 campaign.

A former Northern Ireland youth international, who has since represented England at U19 level, it was quite surprising that Kellyman’s first stint on loan in the EFL came in League One, rather than the Championship.

A versatile midfielder with high technical ability, Kellyman has been occupying the wing for most of his Cardiff career so far, but, as Matt says, it wouldn’t be a shock, and perhaps should be an inevitability, that he begins to play more centrally alongside the excellent Rubin Colwill, who is now set for a long-term spell on the sidelines, at some stage this season.

Kellyman has only scored once, a crucial goal in a 2-1 defeat of Reading in October, without providing any assists in League One and so an improvement in terms of his actual output will be required should he go further to fulfilling his potential, though the Bluebirds have been treated to glimpses of the starlet's clear talent.

It is unknown as to how much Cardiff may be able to spend in the January transfer window, or even next summer, but it is likely to be some way off what Chelsea would ask for after their significant outlay on the Derby-born attacker.