Tonight, Lewis Hall will not make any more appearances for Newcastle United.
This is due to the fact that Chelsea, who is still the legal owner of Lewis Hall, is playing the Magpies. The 19-year-old won’t be eligible to play Monday night at Stamford Bridge against his parent club because he is only temporarily on loan at Newcastle United.
However, it is unlikely that he would have been included even if he had been eligible. Despite making just 11 appearances thus far, the teenager is finding it difficult to break into Eddie Howe’s squad.
Due to his difficult start to life in Tyneside, there have been rumours that he may not even decide to sign a permanent contract with the team in the summer.
They have been closed down, though. Hall is still planning to sign with Newcastle United, but the terms of his contract will be determined by the team’s success rather than by the player.
However, the fact that he hasn’t played much is troubling, and the Athletic have now clarified why Howe is hesitant to start the young player.
Why does Newcastle United’s Lewis Hall not start at the top?
The Athletic claims that because of Hall’s defensive inadequacies, the Newcastle staff does not believe he is ready to start on a regular basis at left-back in the Premier League.
For the Magpies, Hall has only started one league game thus far. That occurred when Newcastle fell to Bournemouth 2-0 in November. That evening, he was substituted at halftime, as he had been twice previously.
It’s obvious that Hall needs to improve his defensive skills. To his credit, he hasn’t played that position his entire career and is still quite young.
At Chelsea, he started out as a midfielder before switching to left back. But it appears that he still has some fine tuning before joining Howe’s club.
But that’s not a source of shame. Gaining his complete trust is a significant challenge, as he is a difficult manager to satisfy.
Hall is still not ready, but he will get there in due course. All he can do is keep up his hard work in the gym and try to figure out what Howe needs defensively and what he wants from him.
The replacement bench will remain his companion till then.
