Newcastle transfer risk could be Chelsea reward as £24m decision looms amid FFP situation

When Newcastle United opted to move for Lewis Hall last summer in a season-long loan deal with an obligation to buy it raised plenty of eyebrows.

The loan deal itself, which involved a £4 million fee for the year, maybe wasn’t such a surprise given the potential that was seen in the 19-year-old left-back, but what was curious was the £28m fee that had been agreed between the two clubs to make the deal permanent this coming summer, with a further £24m to be paid by the Magpies.

It was a deal that was fashioned by Newcastle's former sporting director Dan Ashworth, a man soon to take up a similar role at Manchester United, and one involving two clubs with their own individual concerns around profit and sustainability rule compliance.

Chelsea had been on a spending spree the likes of which the English game had never seen before under the ownership of Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital, with more than £1bn shelled out on a host of young, exciting talents from across the globe. In the space of six months, the club had broken the British transfer record on two separate occasions with the £106.8m addition of Enzo Fernandez and then the £115m signing of Moises Caicedo.

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For Chelsea, the requirement is to make sure the player trading model functions at an optimum level, and that means selling academy graduates comes to the fore given that they count as pure profit from an accounting perspective due to not holding any book value.

The sales of Mason Mount, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Tammy Abraham, and others have been financially beneficial to the club and afforded them some room for