As reported by David Ornstein of The Athletic, Chelsea have contacted Leicester City expressing their interested in signing Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall this summer.
The 25 year old has been with the Foxes since the age of eight, making 129 senior appearances for his boyhood club, 49 of which came last season, scoring 12 goals and providing 14 assists, a key figure as his team won the EFL Championship title, securing an immediate return to the Premier League.
His contract expires in 2027, having signed a five-year deal two summers ago, and Ornstein goes onto claim that Chelsea are the only interested club Dewsbury-Hall would be willing to join, if he were to depart the East Midlands.
Back in January, Brighton & Hove Albion had a bid rejected for Dewsbury-Hall, while a piece by Mike McGrath, Sam Dean and John Percy in the Telegraph claim new Seagulls boss Fabian Hürzeler would like them to reignite their interest.
Leicester City under pressure to sell
As reported by Luke Bosher and Matt Slater in the Athletic, Leicester City are in danger of starting the new Premier League season with a points-deduction, having potentially breached Profitability & Sustainability rules across the last three seasons, two of which they spent in the top division and one in the EFL Championship.
This would go some way to explaining the Foxes’ lack of spending during the 2022/23 campaign, which resulted in relegation, while a season in the second-tier will have done nothing but harm to their precarious finances.
So, there are suggestions that Leicester are under pressure to sell, possibly before the current accounting year ends on 30 June, which seems unlikely now, in order to comply with PSR, with Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall a prime asset, considering he’s in-demand and also an academy graduate, thereby making any transfer fee, in accounting terms, pure profit.
Dewsbury-Hall’s arrival would be a continuation of Chelsea’s transfer strategy
Since Clearlake Capital have taken control over Chelsea, led by Todd Boehly, Behdad Eghbali and José E. Feliciano, they’ve obviously spent a lot of money in the transfer market, around £982 million to be exact, with their strategy, at least in theory, to buy young, up-and-coming players before any other big clubs can get their hands on them.
Mykhailo Mudryk, Malo Gusto, Benoît Badiashile, Noni Madueke, Andrey Santos, Cesare Casadei, Carney Chukwuemeka, Gaga Słonina, Lesley Ugochukwu, Đorđe Petrović, Axel Disasi, Deivid Washington and countless others (we could go on!) certainly fit this profile, with the impending arrivals of both March Guiu from Barcelona as well as Omari Kellyman from Aston Villa suggesting they are sticking to their model.
Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall could be the next player through the door at Stamford Bridge. He’s valued at £25m by Transfermarkt but it remains to be seen how much it would take to convince the Foxes to sell.
