'Important' Newcastle United transfer call made early as £28m deal triggered with Premier League rivals

The signing of Lewis Hall from Chelsea last summer on an initial loan deal was seen as ‘one for the future’ but with a £28million obligation to buy hanging over the deal, it was subject to a lot of scrutiny. That scrutiny intensified as Hall started just one of Newcastle’s first 28 Premier League matches last season and, in that one start, was withdrawn at half-time.

But since then, Hall has been a regular in Howe’s side - featuring in every first-team match since March. Now the club have triggered the £28million clause to make the left-back’s loan permanent, he has arguably been one of their top performers so far this season.

Hall has helped Newcastle keep consecutive clean sheets in the wins against Chelsea and Arsenal at St James’ Park and was named player of the match in the latter. Heading into the November international break, there have been growing calls for the 20-year-old to be handed his first senior England call-up.

While Hall remains focused on his role at Newcastle, Howe believes the player and club are reaping the rewards for a timely piece of transfer business and hard work behind the scenes.

“You're talking to someone who believes in a coaching philosophy and development,” Howe said. “It's very difficult to sign young players to come straight into your team and there was a big transfer fee attached to his name which was the issue for everybody who wanted to see him straight away but we knew we had a bit of work to do to get him to the level we needed him to be.

“The challenge then for Lewis is then to accept that he's come for a big transfer fee and do the work. I've seen players that haven't responded well to that.

“Lewis, he deserves great credit because he worked incredibly hard with double sessions after training and a lot of reviewing and analysis of how he was getting on.”

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“We had no doubt that he would then step into the team and take his opportunity when it came. He really grabbed it towards the end of last season and hasn't looked back. He's in a really good place and started the season very well.” 

Howe also stressed that Newcastle had to jump at the chance to sign Hall on loan when they did or else they would have missed out further down the line.

“We felt if we didn't take him when we did we would possibly regret that in a year's time and then look around and not find a similar player of a similar level with the potential he had,” added the Newcastle boss. “There's always a timing issue around transfers and sometimes you've got to get the timing right, sometimes you can miss the opportunity.

“Thankfully we took it and people understood above me at board level, the thought behind the signing which I think is really important.”