Reds' £110m Moisés Caicedo Deal – Liverpool FC Reloaded

Build a Jörg Schmadtke/Billy Hogan Statue 😜 (Or Maybe Not...)

Hmmm… 🤔

As I said yesterday: FSG never seemed cheap.

The pursuit of Roméo Lavia was giving that erroneous impression, so yesterday I posted the prices (in 2022 money, not 2023 money) of the players bought by Liverpool in the Premier League era.

If there was one ideal no.6 for Liverpool, it was Moisés Caicedo – an absolutely elite midfielder.

With inflation, £110m would still be only the 5th-highest purchase by the Reds, some way behind the record (Andy Carroll, £149m after inflation, as FSG went in big and hard and off-target like ... Andy Carroll). All the top five were centre-forwards.

Wasting time with a phone call about Caicedo, who was set to join Chelsea, looked a fool's errand. Especially when it was noted that no bid would be made, and the Reds were almost just casually enquiring.

I also said yesterday (as I've noted on the site for a year) that Caicedo may be tough player to procure, in addition to being set for Chelsea, as I was told after the 2022 window closed that a deal for the player had fallen through due to agent demands, and I worried that he might still be be unhappy about being jilted. It now seems like there was indeed some attempt to sign him in 2022.

[Edit: rumours of deal falling through. Who knows! All I’d hope is that Liverpool knew Caicedo was willing to join before making this bid, otherwise it’s a waste of everyone’s time. Often see twists and turns, but you’d hope Liverpool can see it over the line. If the deal falls through we can revisit; Caicedo remains a great player, but so is Lavia, if he’s still on the market after all this. At least the Reds are trying to conclude at least one deal right now, so things are at least moving, even if it may now be harder to tie up other deals. But we’ll see. I won’t keep updating this piece but I have given my assessment of developments in the comments section, and will continue to add thoughts in the comments section if there’s any definitive news.]

But from having an increasingly bizarre and scattershot summer since the Julian Ward-agreed Alexis Mac Allister deal, the Reds have apparently laser-focussed at the last minute, to get the best all-round DM in the world. (Better late than never, albeit late is rarely ideal. But for a player this good, fair enough.)

I feel for Lavia (who looks like the best young DM in world, not that Caicedo is old), and still don't quite know why it took so long to get so close to the deal, only to abandon it over the sake of relative pennies at that scale.

Terms with Caicedo would be my other worry. On the BBC, the report is:

“While all the noise was around Chelsea's efforts to sign Caicedo, it is understood Reds chief executive Billy Hogan worked quietly behind the scenes to get this deal in place.

Brighton had a figure they wanted for Caicedo - someone they believe could go on to become one of the world's best - and Hogan's approach allowed Liverpool to get there.”

Hogan has performed classic Liverpool stealth work here, keeping things quiet, but also, paying up. I also now appreciate that the club has indeed been following Premier League inflation and the cost of top midfielders in 2023. (Klopp is being mocked for saying he’d never pay £100m for a footballer, but remember, the average price of a Premier League player has tripled since he said that.)

Unlike the Lavia deal, this was prime FSG-era behaviour.

My criticism of Jörg Schmadtke may well have been off-beam; if Hogan was doing this deal he may have been the doing others. (But if Hogan was doing the deals, what was Schmadtke doing? Making the tea?) Either way, Hogan has played a blinder, channeling his inner Michael Edwards.

The Lavia saga is rendered mostly moot by this news, but if Schmadtke was handling that one, it still not need have been so long, drawn-out and ultimately fruitless (the player will now presumably join Chelsea).

It only really makes sense if the Reds wanted both players, and had hoped to get Caicedo for around £80m, and Lavia for about £40m. Once realising Caicedo would cost more, there was less money (or need?) for Lavia.

I did suggest that someone at the club step in and do something, as the the bids for Lavia were weird, and things were apparently going nowhere.

(Albeit we can never know what's going on behind the scenes, as I kept pointing out, but the public information on the Lavia bids was dispiriting and confusing.)

Klopp is quoted as saying:

“I got told I can confirm the Moisés Caicedo deal is agreed with the club. With the player, we will have to see. Medical today? I can’t tell you, I don’t know. We give it a go and the club have really stretched it to be honest”.

Rather than buy two midfielders and a defender in the final weeks of the season, this could mean just one further new player this summer (or maybe none, if other deals are proving hard to finalise).

You'd think this takes up a fair chunk of the budget, by 'stretching'.

But Caicedo (unless injured) is like two players in one. He has that N'golo Kanté ability to be everywhere – to press, but also then get back at pace – but with added quality on the ball.

But obviously if you buy two cheaper players instead of one expensive one, you add more to the squad, but maybe less to the XI. That’s always the conundrum, especially if you’re a club that balances the books and doesn’t just stockpile mega-signings. (Man City may only have one £100m signing themselves, but have far more expensive players overall, in current day money.)

While the fee is getting up to the Jude Bellingham levels, the overall package should be much less, as Bellingham's wages and extras were huge.

And Madrid were always likely to keep upping the ante, while they had the Champions League trump card. Bellingham was seriously sought (FSG were not just messing around trying to get good PR or to give the fans' false hopes), as I noted, but Madrid just had the edge on that one, in every area of the deal.

As a no.8, Bellingham is the best. But as a no.6, Caicedo, at the age of 21, has it all.

Klopp was positive this morning:

“We have a new start with this Liverpool FC reloaded - it's an exciting thing.

“People wanted changes because we'd been together for a long time. Did it happen at the right moment? That's difficult to answer. But now it happened and that's good.

“We have a new leadership group and if you look at the players not in that group then they also offer a lot, they are exceptional. Cody [Gakpo] is great, Dom [Szoboszlai] is 23 and the captain of Hungary, Macca [Alexis Mac Allister] is also outstanding.

“We all share responsibility, let's take that responsibility and see where we go. Don't try to be like someone just be the best version of yourself.”

Another huge bonus to help partly counteract the lateness is that Caicedo has an excellent playing relationship with Mac Allister, and they may also be friends off the pitch too for all I know (certainly colleagues who looked happy to play together). At least it's someone to help him settle. I always think that’s almost-vital.

Indeed, if the Reds were to field three new midfielders together, that would otherwise be zero shared understanding. A brand new engine-room of strangers could take time to adjust; but this obviates a lot of that issues, even if everyone else has to get to learn to play with one another.

Versatile, brilliant defensively, strong, fast, and excellent with a range of passing from short to long, Caicedo is the full package for a no.6, with the added bonus of being a superb right-back as cover too. He often dropped in there for Brighton last season, and while you don't pay £110m for a right-back, that versatility is worth a few extra million. Especially as the Reds’ no.6 will need to also cover the right-back area, as Trent Alexander-Arnold goes upfield/infield.

So as I said, FSG are not cheap. They spend what comes in.

I'll run the graphic again, and you can slot Caicedo in if the deal is completed. (Grey boxes = FSG signings.)

Barring some medical failure, it's now looking like an excellent summer, as Caicedo is world-class, and still only 21. So many big clubs wanted him for that reason. (He presumably won’t be registered by lunchtime today, in order to play against Chelsea; but maybe playing would just make for a more hostile atmosphere anyway.)

As I noted in yesterday's piece, the Reds have a lot of excellent young players coming through; the older players bring experience and generally play in positions where age can be a bonus, up to a point; and most of the jigsaw looked complete.

(Long-time subscribers will remember a year or so ago when I saw Ben Doak's first U18 game for the Reds, and was so impressed I made sure I watched every one since, and have never changed my mind from a superstar in the making, if he stays free of injuries and keeps grounded. I've still not seen a better 16-year-old, as he was then; comparable only to Michael Owen at that age, half my lifetime ago.)

Now the jigsaw feels complete, at least in terms of the first XI. (Often adding a final jigsaw piece can feel like removing an existing piece, but in this case, Liverpool had zero existing pieces, as they'd all left.)

For paying Subscribers, I'll run yesterday's realistically optimistic season preview below once more (written on Monday), where I look at pretty much all the players in the squad and the balance of the team, in case it got lost in the tumult. It’s almost all about the football, and not the transfer sagas.

Again, use your imagination to slot Caicedo in, if the deal is completed.

(If it's not, well ...)

My season preview below is for paying subscribers only.