Well, for starters, it means that Chelsea has finally decided to raid a club that doesn’t have the words “Brighton & Hove Albion” in its name, which we suppose is a plus. However, the Dewsbury-Hall deal could have positive implications for the Chelsea squad in the upcoming season. This Championship player could be setting the Premier League alight, and he barely hammered into the FFP rules that Chelsea are pushed to abide by nowadays (even if Manchester City aren’t).
How Dewsbury-Hall performed last season
We know that many Chelsea fans don’t pay attention to the Championship. Sometimes, it is difficult enough to keep tabs on our team when we’re constantly failing. However, if you did glance at the Championship news, chances are that you would have seen everybody and their dog chatting about how well Dewsbury-Hall was performing for Leicester, who clinched the title on the last day of the season.
The 25-year-old midfielder (yes, midfielder), smashed in 12 goals and 14 assists. He was part of Leicester’s transition to a more attacking style of play. He did play more defensively the previous season, but it was the bringing in of more attack-minded players that helped to unlock Dewsbury-Hall’s potential. Well, some of his potential. Chelsea will unlock that full potential.
It unlocks midfield options
Chelsea wasn’t exactly the hardest hit with injuries last season, but there were a couple of scares. Thankfully, we’ve now got Dewsbury-Hall.
Dewsbury-Hall is a player who has shown he can handle anywhere in midfield. So, if we have a midfielder out for the count, Dewsbury-Hall can be slotted right in there and perform reasonably well. However, we do hope that he will be used in the position he is best known for performing well at – as the number 8. It is here that we reckon we’ll benefit from one of the most popular sports betting features – in-play betting. We know that if he is playing number 8, he’ll smash in a few assists if the play lines up well.
He can even play as number 10
Owing to his talents – and what we’ve seen of him from the games he has played for Leicester – Dewsbury-Hall is going to play best in position 8. He is a box-to-box midfielder at heart, and he’ll be playing both on the defence and attack, which is absolutely what this team needs right now. We need more versatile players. However, he is also capable of playing as a number 10. There’s a good chance that he’ll be pushed more toward the attacking side of things than the defending side, since Caicedo, Gallagher and Fernández can handle that.
We reckon that there’ll be times when he will be called into action as a number 10, possibly if the squad is scrambling to get a goal in the dying minutes of the game (although, we hope he will be called into action before that).
In our opinion, he is more likely to perform a role as a double-pivot. He’ll transition into a second number 10 when Chelsea is on the attack. Well, sort of. The tactics will need to be played about with a bit, but we reckon that you’ll see Dewsbury-Hall doing a lot of attacking. He’ll be trying to push himself into the box quite a bit, particularly from the CM position.
He’ll provide service to the strikers
The Championship is a completely different kettle of fish from the Premier League, so we aren’t quite sure how Dewsbury-Hall will fare here. However, based on what we’ve seen him do in the Championship, we reckon that he’s going to do a bang-up job providing a ton of service to the strikers.
Dewsbury-Hall has proved that he loves to get the ball toward the strikers as quickly as possible, often down the side of the pitch. We wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of the year, Dewsbury-Hall ends up becoming one of our top assist players.
More pace
The new managerial style is probably going to become more possession-based. Sort of like what Graham Potter tried, but it’ll work (we hope). However, there’ll still be a lot of room for speed in the new Chelsea squad, and Dewsbury-Hall will probably be the one showing that speed.
We wouldn’t be surprised if Dewsbury-Hall not only creates a lot of assists but bangs in fewer power hits too. When playing for Leicester, he was a huge fan of managing to carve out space in the centre of the pitch. He probably will struggle against the fastest midfielders and defenders in the league, but we reckon that Dewsbury-Hall will end up creating way more space than you think, and he’ll have some banging solo goals.
Left foot…FINALLY!
Chelsea is seriously lacking players who can score with their left foot, so finally, it is nice to say we’ve got a player who can do that. Many of his goals last season came from the left foot.
He’s not going to impact Financial Fair Play all that much
After spending the last couple of years lining Brighton’s pockets with loads of cash, which ended up costing us nearly £50m per win, and some of it not benefiting Chelsea as a whole, there have been mutterings that Chelsea needs to do something to not fall foul of Financial Fair Play rules, so it is nice to know that we managed to pick up Dewsbury-Hall on the cheap. A snip at just £30 million, although on a six-year contract.
If we can shift a bit of the dead weight in the Chelsea squad during the next couple of months, there’s a good chance that we won’t have any issues with FFP, and that could help the squad going forward. Although, we do still have the problem of having a ton of players on contracts that are far lengthier than many of them deserve. But that’s a story for another day. All you need to know right now is that you’ve got the lowdown on how Dewsbury-Hall will impact our squad in the 24/25 season.
