Lloyd Kelly, welcome to Newcastle. A sentence we all expected to read before his contract expiry on June 30th and a sentence we have now all read. But what does he bring that the legendary Paul Dummett doesn’t have? And how does he compliment our current squad? Well, let me answer that by telling you his career history and what type of player Lloyd Kelly truly is.
Lloyd has just joined us from the Cherries signing a x year deal.
Lloyd Kelly was born in Bristol and he joined local side Bristol City aged 12 in 2011. He made his debut in August 2017 in a 5-0 victory against Plymouth Argyle. He made his first league start just before Christmas in the same year, against QPR on the 23rd December. At the end of 2017-18 season he was named their young player of the year.
May 2019 marks the date that after 48 appearances and nearly two years on from his debut Kelly left his boyhood club to join Premier League side Bournemouth. He played under Eddie at Bournemouth. He made his debut in an EFL cup games against Burton Albion on 29th September 2019. He waited nearly a year for his first league appearance this coming during lockdown in June 2020 (from the subs bench). In 2021-22 season Kelly began captaining the Cherries as a replacement for the benched Steve Cook, and on the latter’s departure became the official club captain of Bournemouth, before being stripped of this when Gary O’Neil came in. O’Neil defined his reasoning as one to help Lloyd “develop” but hoped he would still “show the same leadership qualities”. In total he played 141 games scoring thrice.
Kelly joins Newcastle as a very versatile player being adaptable to both centre back and left back. He is a very talented ball playing defender able to pass out of the backline and help transition the team forward. He’s also been described be media sources as a “see ball, win ball” touch tackling defender and as a full back he is just as proficient in these roles as he is at centre back.
Lloyd brings in a backup option to Botman and Burn at left centre back and can compete for that starting role with them. Furthermore, he adds another option to left back meaning Dan Burn might never have to play off of the left again and may instead be used in his preferred role at centre back permanently.
Whatever happens how do we feel with this signing Toon fans?
Joe Horn
Articles by Horn 
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