[Trending News] How did Newcastle’s Lloyd Kelly end up in the Champions League with Juventus?

Lloyd Kelly’s first start of 2025?

Against Bromley of League Two, English football’s fourth tier, in the FA Cup’s third round on January 12 as one of nine Newcastle United changes to their previous line-up as coach Eddie Howe fielded a largely second-string side.

Kelly’s second start of 2025?

Against Dutch title holders PSV on February 11 in a Champions League play-off to decide who goes forward to the round of 16 next month as the 26-year-old defender made his home debut for Juventus, 36-time champions of Italy and two-time winners of the European Cup/Champions League (among their nine appearances in the final).

How Kelly went from joining Newcastle as a free agent last summer, and beginning the season as a direct competitor to Lewis Hall and Dan Burn for their respective starting positions, only to be relegated to their fourth-choice centre-half, to then making his bow in Europe’s premier club competition for Italy’s most successful domestic side is a strange, and far from linear, tale.

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Juventus even displaying an interest in Kelly was curious enough, given his struggles this season.

But their willingness to belatedly agree to an initial loan which contains easily attainable targets that will trigger an obligation-to-buy clause worth up to £20million ($24.9m) ensured this was arguably the most random deal of the entire winter window.

Gleison Bremer, Juventus’ best defender, and Juan Cabal, their first-choice left-back, suffered anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee injuries in October and November respectively, so reinforcing their back line was a mid-season priority. Despite having already signed youngster Renato Veiga on loan from Chelsea for the rest of the season, Juventus’ desperation led them to negotiate a deal for Kelly at what many within recruitment circles feel was a significantly inflated price.

The mixed, if largely unkind, reviews of Kelly’s opening two performances for Juventus — as a half-time substitute in a 2-1 win against Serie A strugglers Como on Sunday and then his 90-minute display against PSV, during which he was exposed on Ivan Perisic’s leveller before Juventus won 2-1 again, only add to this transfer’s peculiarity.

Kelly’s ability to cover centre-back and left-back and play as a hybrid defender may have appealed to Thiago Motta, Juventus’ head coach, but the (Giorgio) Chiellini-to-Kelly transition at the Turin giants still jars. Juventus’ decision to allow Dean Huijsen, now one of Europe’s most in-demand centre-backs, to join Bournemouth for £13million last summer is also looking increasingly shortsighted.

At the Newcastle end, there are fewer queries about the soundness of the deal, given its value and Kelly’s lack of football this season, even if recent circumstances have exposed the potential risk they’ve taken by reducing the depth of their squad.

During a week in which Sven Botman and Burn suffered injury scares — the early prognosis suggests their respective knee and groin issues are not serious, even if both are doubts for Saturday’s game against champions Manchester City — the wisdom of permitting Kelly to leave in the middle of a season has been questioned.

From a purely footballing and squad-depth outlook, that argument has merit. But the finances involved made the deal extremely difficult for Newcastle to turn down from a business point of view.

After all, that match against Bromley last month marked only Kelly’s seventh start for Newcastle and came six weeks after his sixth — a disastrous display during the 2-0 home defeat by West Ham on November 25.

While Newcastle entered January looking to recoup funds to ensure their ongoing compliance with the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR), Kelly had not necessarily been earmarked as someone likely to depart. Miguel Almiron’s exit was anticipated, his was not — though the noises around his future began to subtly shift following Eddie Howe’s team selection for Tottenham away on January 4.

With Fabian Schar suspended for that trip to Spurs and the Carabao Cup semi-final first leg at their north London neighbours Arsenal three days later, and Emil Krafth and Jamaal Lascelles sidelined through injury, Howe had just three left-footed centre-halves from whom to select. Burn was in form and had been a regular in the team, leaving the head coach with a straight choice between Kelly and Botman.

Kelly had been fit all season — somewhat ironically, given his injury record was Newcastle’s main reservation before signing him — while Botman had not played since March 16, when he ruptured his ACL. Yet, rather than start Kelly, Howe opted to deploy Botman in an unfamiliar right-sided role twice inside four days, before resting him against Bromley the following weekend.

Those three team selections crystallised Kelly’s squad status and made a winter-window exit a possibility.

The player was also receptive to leaving a club he’d only joined in July.

Alongside the pull of playing for a club of Juventus’ global stature, he had a desire to start afresh following a testing time on Tyneside during which his quality was questioned by some Newcastle fans.

Kelly’s path to Italian football follows an increasing trend for British players. He has joined Tammy Abraham, Fikayo Tomori, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Kyle Walker in Serie A — that quartet are all at Milan — and is among 11 England-qualified players in Italy’s top flight.

“I’m excited,” Kelly told Juventus TV upon signing. “It’s quite a transition, so I’m going to have to adapt quickly, but I’m looking forward to the challenge. I never say no to a challenge.”

For Howe, the business logic behind the transfer was accepted, even if he was “very reluctant” to part with Kelly. “It was not necessarily my decision to let him leave,” Howe said at the time.

Last summer was the second time Howe had signed Kelly, having also taken him from Bristol City of the second-tier Championship for £13million when he was Bournemouth manager in summer 2019.

The defender’s versatility, as a left-back and left-sided centre-half, made him attractive, as did his recovery pace (a commodity Newcastle’s other defenders lack) and previous Premier League experience, and he was viewed, as a minimum, as an ideal squad player.

Yet, across a season and a half under Howe’s tutelage at Bournemouth and then Newcastle, Kelly made only 16 starts.

Although inexperience and injury restricted his appearances at the south-coast club across 2019-20, a season that ended in their relegation and Howe stepping down, the manager’s preference for others ensured he rarely featured during his first six months at St James’ Park.

Kelly began the campaign being rotated with Hall at left-back, but the latter soon made that position his own. Kelly’s confidence duly dipped.

Even so, when Fenerbahce of Turkey offered £11million for him shortly after that cup tie against Bromley, and Juventus initially proposed an initial loan including an option to buy, those terms made little sense to Newcastle.

“Lloyd’s an integral part of what we’re doing, from my perspective,” Howe said in a press conference on January 24, when asked directly if Kelly could leave. “We’ve certainly not had any bid anywhere close to making the club make a decision.”

If the first part of Howe’s answer sounded like a rebuttal to the idea of Kelly departing, the second matched the soundings emerging from the hierarchy. Kelly was not someone Newcastle were actively looking to sell but, given his book value was zero as he’d been a free-transfer arrival, meaning any sale represented pure profit in PSR terms, there was an acceptance that an offer of significant value would simply have to be considered.

While reports in Italy repeatedly claimed a deal was progressing throughout the final week of the window, Paul Mitchell, Newcastle’s sporting director, waited patiently for Juventus to make a sizeable offer.

The situation was viewed as a win-win. If a huge bid arrived, Newcastle would bolster their PSR position moving forward by offloading someone who had played just 303 top-flight minutes for them. If such an offer did not, they simply kept an experienced, still-relatively-young player who could cover two defensive positions.

For Juventus, the need to strengthen became increasingly fraught once Pierre Kalulu, a centre-back signed last summer on loan from Milan, suffered an injury that forced him off in the first half of their January 29 Champions League game against Benfica and their other targets proved elusive. Ronald Araujo opted to stay at Barcelona, a deal for Lens’ Kevin Danso collapsed (he ended up being loaned to Tottenham) and Tomori turned down opportunities to leave Milan.

Kelly had attracted interest from Milan last summer when he was a free agent, while Cristiano Giuntoli, Juventus’ chief football officer, had also tracked his progress and, of the options available, deemed the defender best-suited to play in Serie A.

On February 2, around 36 hours before last Monday’s transfer deadline, Juventus finally made an offer which Newcastle’s hierarchy felt was too good to refuse.

As Juventus revealed to their shareholders, a €3million (£2.5m, $3.11m) initial loan fee was paid, with €14.5m due over three years, once “certain sporting objectives” are met before the end of this season. Further add-ons, including performance-related payments, up to a combined €10m may also be payable.

While the loan fee counts towards the present three-year rolling PSR period, the €14.5million sale can be banked by Newcastle for their 2025-26 accounts and gives their summer kitty a healthy (and welcome) boost. Newcastle never expected to receive such an eye-opening offer for Kelly and, outside of the inflated January market, a future high-value bid was deemed unlikely. Therefore, the belief was they had to accept this one.

Given Kelly’s wages will be removed from the payroll once the deal becomes permanent, Newcastle may look to replace him with someone on a lower salary. The problem is that significant squad surgery is already required come the summer and this departure makes that even more complicated. Kelly’s ability to cover left-back and left centre-half makes him difficult to replace. Two players may be required to cover all eventualities, on top of the right centre-half that is already first on the club’s priority list.

Interest from the second-tier Championship in fellow defender Matt Targett was rebuffed once Kelly’s departure seemed likely, but the ex-Aston Villa man was available for transfer until then and will now likely move on during the off-season.

Having turned 26 in October, Kelly was also the second-youngest central defender in Newcastle’s first-team squad and the age profile of their centre-half contingent needs to come down. Between now and the end of the season, Howe must also hope his side are not beset by significant injuries in defence or they could swiftly become stretched.

“I don’t think it’s ideal,” Howe said of losing two players without bringing anyone in. “We are trying to manage PSR and make decisions that will benefit us long term.”

From a Newcastle perspective, that helps explain why Kelly’s reunion with his former Bournemouth boss lasted just 217 days.

From Juventus’ side, their desperation for fit defenders aside, it is difficult to explain adequately why they committed such cash to acquire Newcastle’s fourth-choice centre-half just six months after he’d been available as a free agent. He must now justify that level of outlay.

(Top photo: Grzegorz Wajda/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)