Newcastle’s £28m man Lewis Hall never plays – and that is a concern for Chelsea
If you look closely at the ritual celebratory photos in the dressing room that follow every Newcastle United victory you will be able to spot Lewis Hall lurking in the background with a smile that will fall into the ‘forced’ category.
This is the curious case of a £28 million summer signing who has become Newcastle’s mystery man and a loan move where nobody seems to know for sure what happens next.
When Newcastle announced they had signed Hall, a boyhood Newcastle fan, from Chelsea in the summer, it appeared to fill their need for a young left-back to put pressure on Dan Burn.
It was a strange deal. Newcastle paid around £4 million to loan the 19-year-old for the season with an obligation to pay another £24 million for the move to become a permanent one.
But Hall has started just one Premier League game, against Bournemouth, back in November, in which he was taken off at half-time in a drab 2-0 defeat. He also started in Newcastle’s 2-0 Champions League defeat by Borussia Dortmund that same month, but was again replaced at half-time. Hall has managed 104 minutes of Premier League football this season and even during the club’s crippling injury crisis in December, was used only as a substitute late in games.
Newcastle constructed the transfer so they would continue to comply with the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules, with Chelsea happy to wait for full payment for their academy graduate until the following summer.
The fee would represent pure profit for Chelsea, who have their own PSR concerns, as he is a homegrown player. But there is still no guarantee they will receive that money as Eddie Howe confirmed on Friday the teenager has not yet met the criteria for the loan move to become a permanent deal.
Telegraph Sport tries to make sense of a confusing situation...
Why has Hall not played?
The deal was mainly driven by former director of football Dan Ashworth, with Howe happy enough to take a player he believed had the potential to become one of the best left-backs in the country.
The reality, though, swiftly dawned on the Newcastle manager. Hall is raw and he was not as advanced in his development as he had initially thought. He lacks both the defensive awareness and the physicality to produce the performances Howe needs for the first team.
There have been flashes of quality, not least his first goal for the club in the Carabao Cup win over Manchester United in the autumn, but Hall is a midfield player who converted to full-back and it has shown.
When Burn was injured before Christmas and with Matt Targett also missing through injury, Howe preferred to play Tino Livramento, a right-back, on that side of the defence.
The brutal truth is, Hall is not good enough at the moment to be a first-choice left-back in the Premier League and Howe does not feel he could be better deployed in midfield either.
But he urged people to recognise what Hall is – a youngster with potential who Newcastle signed for the future, not the present.
“In terms of my thinking, I’m preparing for Lewis to be at Newcastle for many years,” Howe said when asked about Hall’s future on Tyneside.
“He was always brought in with a long-term view, not a short-term signing. He is a long-term signing.”
Are Newcastle going to sign him permanently?
This is where things get murkier as Howe confirmed Newcastle were not, currently, obliged to make the loan move permanent at the end of the season.
Asked if the criteria had been met for Newcastle to have to sign Hall, Howe replied: “I don’t think that has quite happened yet, but hopefully it will do very soon.”
Pushed to say what those criteria are, Howe declined to do so, adding: “Now you’re digging too deep.”
It is a strange approach to a straightforward question. Sources have maintained Newcastle will have to sign Hall in the summer and pay the money Chelsea desperately need, but as long as the criteria for that obligation to happen remain unfulfilled, doubts exist.
It leads to the obvious question: has Howe, conscious of the fact PSR will also be an issue for Newcastle again this summer, refused to play Hall as he does not want appearance clauses to kick in as the money can be better spent elsewhere when the window opens? It is possible, although that has been denied by sources.
It is also thought Newcastle’s league position in May will be relevant. There have been suggestions that Newcastle will not confirm Hall is signing permanently until they are mathematically safe from relegation.
That seems an inevitability, although there have also been, as yet unfounded claims, that Newcastle have to finish above a certain league position rather than just avoid relegation. Again, this has not been confirmed or denied.
If Newcastle do pull out of deal, what does this mean for Chelsea?
The money for Hall will not be received until July even if the move does, as expected, still become permanent. So it will not help Chelsea – who announced losses of £90 million in their most recent accounts – comply with PSR rules for this season anyway.
Clubs are only allowed combined losses of £105 million over a three-year period to comply and Chelsea are believed to be planning to sell several squad players before the end of June to get back on track financially.
The money for Hall, though, will be very useful in terms of funding their summer recruitment plans and it would be a huge blow to the club if he returned to Stamford Bridge.
Chelsea would not get anything like £28 million for him now, given how little he has played at Newcastle this season.
As Howe has talked positively about Hall and his future at the club, there is no doubt signing him was a mistake. Newcastle needed first team-ready players last summer and have committed to spending a chunk of this summer’s budget on a player who could not get into the side, even when there were no other fit players who specialised in that position available.
