Newcastle have just smashed Tottenham 4-0 at St James’ Park to secure their spot in the European places further. Watching Spurs get battered should be a universally enjoyable event for Chelsea fans, but this one was bitter sweet.
Not only does it help Newcastle stay clear of our feeble attempts to close the gap on them in the European places, it also triggers a rather significant clause. The loan of Lewis Hall from the Blues to the Magpies was guaranteed to be made permanent if they finished higher than 14th, and the 3 points secured today makes that mathematically certain now.
Newcastle's win over Spurs means they can't finish worse than 14th, thus triggering the criteria for Lewis Hall's £28m move from Chelsea.🤝 pic.twitter.com/01o6cMX8Wh
— Ben Jacobs (@JacobsBen) April 13, 2024
Chelsea stuck in loss-making cycle
So that’s £28m locked in for our next accounting period then. Cue celebrations.
But of course, the folly of this whole setup is that losing Hall now means we definitely have to sign another left back. So either we sign a player for more than that and lose money, or we sign a player for less than that and the squad (probably) gets worse.
Can we sign a better player for less than £28m? Potentially, yes. But given our track record in recent years, it would be incredibly unlikely. We spent north of £60m on Marc Cucurella in the same position, and he’s now effectively being replaced.
What we have to hope now is that the academy produces another Hall, or another Ian Maatsen, for us to slot in for free. But knowing how this ownership’s model works now, that will just mean another juicy “pure profit” sale to be made.
We could theoretically start next season with Ben Chilwell and Cucurella as our options, with Levi Colwill able to shift over and cover there as third choice. But given Chilwell can’t stay fit and Cucurella looks more like a League One defender at times, that’s not a route we want to go down.
