There is another interesting twist in the tale of Lewis Hall.
The Chelsea academy product was loaned out to Newcastle, and it was pretty clear that that deal was going to be made permanent. What wasn’t certain was the mechanism.
More and more doubt has been cast on that though – Hall hasn’t played much, and the suggestion was the the number of starts required to trigger a permanent move might not be met.
However, Luke Edwards of the Telegraph has thrown all that out by today claiming that the obligation to buy is based on the Newcastle’s final league position, and has nothing to do with Hall’s individual minutes.
What that means is that on Monday night, Chelsea can perform a small act of financial self harm (albeit one that most fans would be delighted with) by beating the Magpies and hurting their league position while improving ours. Given we’re one of the teams chasing them, we genuinely could affect their league position by trying to leap above them.