Moises Caicedo completes Chelsea’s dream midfield — but £115m deal could haunt them

Chelsea’s latest signing becomes the third biggest buy in footballing history

It may be a way of demonstrating they are caring employers. Chelsea have found a way of relieving the burden on Enzo Fernandez of being the most expensive signing in Premier League history. It is, admittedly, a costly way to aid the World Cup winner and will merely transfer the pressure to his new sidekick. But the £107 million Argentinian will soon be rebranded as the cheaper half of a midfield double act.

At £115 million, Moises Caicedo represents a staggering signing in several respects, and not merely because the Ecuadorian and Fernandez could be a devastatingly good partnership. At £222 million for the two of them, they really ought to be. But a 21-year-old with a solitary season of regular first-team football in a major league has become the third-biggest buy in footballing history, behind only Neymar and Kylian Mbappe.

And if it is stating the obvious to say Caicedo, the scorer of two goals for Brighton, is a very different type of player, that is revealing in itself. Hyperinflation affecting South Americans tended to be a reference to failing economies on the continent until Chelsea escalated the price of defensive midfielders (and then, having spent £107 million on Fernandez, decided he was not a defensive midfielder, meaning they needed someone who is to accompany him). Chelsea created the climate in which they had to pay way over the odds for Caicedo.

They created their own problem in another respect, shedding players at such a rate that they went from having too many midfielders to too few: within a few months, Jorginho, N’Golo Kante, Mateo Kovacic, Mason Mount, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Denis Zakaria all left Stamford Bridge. Kante’s brilliance was long apparent but it has been underlined by the fact that his replacement cost Chelsea £115 million. Caicedo may be the closest thing to a like-for-like successor, another bundle of energy allied with footballing ability. He and Fernandez are a high-calibre, high-cost duo.

But the great winners in it all, unsurprisingly, are Brighton. Tony Bloom made his money in gambling and taking a punt on Caicedo has brought him a nine-figure profit. The Ecuadorian was the successor to Yves Bissouma, on whom Albion doubled their money.

The sums have long added up for Bloom. They don’t for Chelsea. As Caicedo takes their expenditure in the Todd Boehly era to around £900 million, a destroyer of a player has joined a club with similar characteristics. Chelsea are driving a bulldozer through Financial Fair Play.

They can cite the £200 million of sales this summer, some of it on homegrown players such as Mount who count as pure profit, or the amortisation of fees over lengthy contracts. They can argue that many big earners are no longer on the wage bill – though they were last season and the sheer volume of footballers meant they were playing several of them not to play.

But it is worth noting that Chelsea’s revenue streams have diminished. They do not currently have a shirt sponsor. They made around £100 million in Champions League prize money in 2020-21. They will not get a penny from it this season, while their matchday income will go down, too. It is inconceivable they can even come close to complying with regulations, involving a total loss of £105 million over three financial years. Or, to put it another way, less than the cost of Caicedo.

Moises Caicedo has joined Chelsea in a deal possibly worth £115million (Bradley Collyer/PA) (PA Wire)

Less than Liverpool’s offer for him, too. If much at Stamford Bridge is inexplicable, so are recent actions at Anfield. The only positive element may be that they drove the price for Caicedo up but it does not offer an answer to why Liverpool bid a record sum for a player many at Anfield thought was always bound for Chelsea. It was a way of showing their hand, revealing their budget. Liverpool also seem to have lost out in the race to sign Romeo Lavia; but Chelsea could be forced to pay over the odds for the teenager with limited experience that included relegation. The going rate for his signature now seems to be approaching £60 million. Any other target could cost more as a result, too. It is tempting to wonder if the canny Michael Edwards would have acted in such a way in his time as director of football. The Jorg Schmadtke interregnum, when Jurgen Klopp seems to have more power, is proving a difficult period, with a hole in Liverpool’s midfield and their planning.

The simplistic criticism may be unfair: if Liverpool have £100 million, why did they not spend it on Jude Bellingham? Because, in part, they had concluded he was bound for Real Madrid and it came when they did not expect to bring in a combined £52 million for Fabinho and Jordan Henderson. But if Chelsea are already making a generational talent like Bellingham look cheap for Real, they are also driving prices up to an unsustainable level. If Liverpool suffer from that now, Chelsea may do later.