Gullit ready to sell Vialli

Football

Gullit ready to sell Vialli

Gianluca Vialli will be allowed to leave Chelsea this summer because Ruud Gullit will not tolerate any long faces around him.

The unhappy Italian, not even guaranteed his place on the substitutes' bench for tomorrow's FA Cup final against Middlesbrough, insists he will see out the remaining two years of his contract. But Gullit is adamant he will not try to keep anyone who is unhappy at the club, just as he sold Gavin Peacock and John Spencer early in his first year.

"I don't want any player to leave, every player here is welcome to stay," he said. "But if the player himself has said he wants to leave then it is difficult.

"We had it already in the middle of the season with Peacock and Spencer. I had conversations with them and they just said they didn't want to stay under these circumstances, so it's over. It sent a message because a whole lot of players then came to me and said, 'I want to be part of Chelsea, I don't want to go' so I accepted that. Strangely, players I had meetings with played more."