His goal reminded me of Essien, he is starting to come into his own. Thankfully Liverpool never got him.
Moises Caicedo | Chelsea player
- Thread starter Samid
- Start date
So to the above two, seems like when his contract expires in 2031 maybe we sign him. Let’s just hope he isn’t our next DM signing!
That would be mac Allister
So what?
So when Rooney had a good game after his huge transfer, you were sat there going "well, that's the bare minimum for the fee, innit?"
Just enjoy good football and don't be so joyless.
Rooney, at 18, did bag a Champions League hat trick on his debut so the bar was high from the off.
Crazy now when you look back at it.
Just picking CM players, Wharton, MacAllister, Gravenberch, Gibbs-White, Anderson, Bruno G, Rice, Rodri (albeit not last season), Tielemans.
All of these players had better seasons last season than Caicedo, and certainly some of them can claim to be ahead of him this too. Rice for sure has had a better last season than Caicedo, and also this one too.
I'm sure the argument back to that will be "but they're not all defensive minded players" or words to that effect, but majority of the names, of not all of the names above play some form of box to box role, similar to Caicedo, some excel more in the attacking phases (Gibbs White) some are more defensive (Gravenberch).
If you genuinely think the likes of Tielemans amd Gibbs-White are better players then fair enough.
No the argument will be that they didn't all have better seasons than Caicedo.
This is a really strange hill to die on. The only players you could argue are better are Rice, Gravenberch and Rodri but then again, we don't know how Rodri will do after his injury, and Rice isn't a holding midfielder, so he doesn't play in Caicedo's position. The others are just a mix of centre midfielders and attacking midfielders.
Caicedo is being eyed by Real Madrid and was Chelsea's player of the season last year. The idea that he has just had a "few" great performances this season is objectively wrong, which is why you're being corrected by a lot of people, and no one share your opinion. That alone should be an indicator that what you're saying is just wrong. He single-handedly holds the midfield by himself, allowing Enzo to join in on attack which is why he more than doubled his goal contributions last season compared to the season before. Caicedo is unbelievably complete, and does not have a real weakness in his game.
I understand we lost out on him and we're still a bit bitter about it, but there is no need to make things up.
Really is.
That's not what I'm saying, I'm saying they had better seasons last season than Caicedo, I actually don't think that's too controversial a statement.
Interesting take. If Caicedo was to play himself against Gibbs white and Tielemans, my money would be on Caicedo.
Strange take.
What are we talking here? One v one game, world cup singles, nutmeg challenge?
I dont think the combined ability of MGW and Tielemans is as good as Caicedo.
It's an absurd statement unless you are disproportionately weighting team success relative to expectations / money spent as opposed to a player's individual performance
Best midfielder in the league this season. Not sure it's even close.
It really isn't.
All those individuals had excellent seasons, surpassing that one of Caicedo.
I'm sure, like most Chelsea fans who seem to be ridiculously overprotective of their players for some reason, are conflating the fact that I'm claiming Caicedo didn't have as good a season as the aforementioned with calling him a poor player, which quite obviously isn't the case.
I mean in a two v one game they'd eat Caicedo alive, so not really sure I understand your reasoning here.
Gibbs-White has far better attributes in an attacking sense than Caicedo, there was a passage of play in the Chelsea game last season where he stole the ball of Caicedo and powered past him showing that he has a slightly better turn of pace too.
Tielemans is better on the ball than Caicedo, of that there is no question.
However, tackling and recoveries is Caicedos strong point, he far surpasses the others in this.
Based on what? Certainly not the statistics or the eye test
Wow, this post is nuts, Wharton had a good season , a good season for him to get noticed .
Same goes for Anderson, both Last season had a “very good “ breakthrough season, a bit long to explain but it’s the season where Caicedo put himself on notice at Brighton.
Bruno G wasn’t spectacular he is just consistent, no different from his previous seasons.
I love how you tried to shoe horn Rodri.
The last two Isn’t worth explaining.
I can give you Ryan Grav and Mac, I can make the argument against Rice.
Just go through the thread and see what people thought of his season , see how many disagreed.
I think you're going off on a tangent here about last season only, that wasn't what we were talking about. You said...
I asked...
So who are some of the players you think are better than him in his position of it's not that list you posted?
Caicedo is brilliant, and we should have been after him at the time Chelsea signed him.
He's the best all round CM in the league. Rodri if he can get his form back from Balon d'Or year is better, but that's it.
He's the best all round CM in the league. Rodri if he can get his form back from Balon d'Or year is better, but that's it.
ETH has stated time and again he desired a 6 THAT summer but "funds were unavailable". Which was because everyone we bought that summer was for much more than we should have. Thanks to our board's market practice incompetence.
Nothing to do with the kinda poor recruitment that makes one ignore a 6 completely. The poor recruitment we actually engaged in was utterly over paying for players we wanted and should got due to a staggeringly bad ability to negotiate transfer fees under that board.
And Caicedo's price was known. Any idea he'd have cost less than (1 season left) Mount did that sumner at any point is just wishful thinking. Still none expected him to cost Enzo type money.
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This guy 100% puts ice in his beer.
I like that. I will keep it for future use.
It's bad enough people thought he was "fairly average" in his first season, but to say he was last season has to be up there with one of the worst takes of all time.
Poor man's Tielemans apparently.
If we’re so intent on playing Bruno in a 2, Caicedo is one of only 2/3 players on the planet who could make it work as his partner. He is unreal.
It was really disappointing when we missed out on signing him straight from his club in Ecuador. I did write a lot about his potential ability and one of things that really stood out for me about him is his ability to play under pressure in confined spaces. And that's something that's absolutely imperative to have in your deeper positioned players in the build up phase. Of course there's plenty of other qualities he has that I have spoken about in the past, but his all round ability in and out of possession is amongst the very best in Europe for a midfield player.
And also our scouts did identify Caicedo very early and it seems we were ahead of the game in comparison to most big clubs as far as Caicedo's talents are concerned. But unfortunately Woodward and Judge couldn't get a deal done for reasons we have already discussed in the past. But our scouts in South America were good in that regard and it's the same scouting team still in South America that is in charge of signing players from that region. The young lad (Orozco) who we have signed from Colombia is another player who has been identified by the same scouts who have been at the club since 2016.
And also our scouts did identify Caicedo very early and it seems we were ahead of the game in comparison to most big clubs as far as Caicedo's talents are concerned. But unfortunately Woodward and Judge couldn't get a deal done for reasons we have already discussed in the past. But our scouts in South America were good in that regard and it's the same scouting team still in South America that is in charge of signing players from that region. The young lad (Orozco) who we have signed from Colombia is another player who has been identified by the same scouts who have been at the club since 2016.
Can you post credible sources for both of these claims before the summer started? And even if ETH did want a 6, it was also his choice, where he had a lot of input in the recruitment decisions to buy Mount.
Loaning Amrabat for 10m and then proceeding to not play him most of the season because ETH was insistent on playing a 4-2-4 donut midfield says a lot about his priority on the '6' position.
Who has suggested he would have cost less?
Therefore, at the beginning of the summer, it would have been a reasonable thought/red flag to think 'hey whytf are we spending £50m+ on Mount, a profile of midfielder we don't need, when we could presumably spend it on Caicedo, who presumably wouldn't cost that much more than Mount?'. So my original claim was 'correct' then as you've just admitted.
Yeah not getting him then is what really stings
Just thinking about this. You guys were evidently in for him when he was still in Ecuador, Arsenal bid £70M for him from Brighton in January '23, Liverpool bid had an £111M fee agreed for him before he eventually chose Chelsea.
It's not usually you have 3 other rival clubs actually putting in concrete bids for a player at different times and then the fanbases feeling genuinely aggrieved that neither of the 3 managed to get it over the line.
You are just refusing to accept something fairly simple. Mount was the easiest purchase on our list of targets So was brought in first. Any claim he was "number 1" let alone priotized over any other role is wishful thinking at best and disingenuous malice at worst. In the same bracket as the inane rumour 'Antony was chosen over Kudu's by ETH"
. Casemiro was his preffered 6 in his formation with Mainoo or Eriksen as his partners. THAT and the fact Amrabat's form for a good chunk wasn't good was why he took long to get a run in center midfield.
Nothing to do with "not wanting a 6"
People like you who blatantly imagine "we should have gone for him" that summer. You don't say that unless you DO imagine he'd have ever been in our price range
You are conflating Enzo kinda money with fees we could afford. Caicedo was easily a 70m pound player that summer. The "shock" was they got over 110 for him.
But value for money is hugely important otherwise we’d have got a cd, wb, 2 x cm as well and spent similar to Liverpool but because we spent huge on shyte players we can’t. That can have an impact on joyfulness.
So you can't the provide sources that in your own words 'ETH has stated time and again he desired a 6 THAT summer' and the public knowledge for Cacedo's transfer fee. Big assumptions that if I don't believe or are not sure of, means I'm the one, who is refusing to accept, got it.
Unless you, ETH and the board thought we had an unlimited budget then bringing in Mount was a choice that they had to deal with (tactical and financial). You can not just whittle off the fact of bringing in Mount for £50m+ was simply business as usual and pretend it didn't affect the rest of the recruitment.
I never said Caicedo would have cost less than Mount, which is what you had said, putting words into my mouth.
Again I never said we would have afforded £100m+ at the beginning of the summer, which is when I made my point about ETH signing Mount was a red flag. It was the possible notion of Caicedo being 'affordable' relative to the money we paid for Mount (i.e not that much more), which you've just admitted was assumed to be around £70m in that summer. And even then the main issue of the 'red flag' wasn't not buying Caicedo, it was not buying a 'proper' 6 for the limited budget we did indeed have the time.
Let's leave it there. You've totally misunderstood my position, putting words that I didn't say and not engaging with what I'm rebutting.
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Because they aren't playing well. Not because of the fees.
You're correct that a midfielder should've been targeted in the summer we signed Mount. And from reliable reports, the plan was to sign a midfielder and another CB. But for that to occur, we needed to offload both Mctominay and Maguire who we tried offloading but both players refused to leave. The player that was targeted for the central midfield in that summer while offloading Mctominay was Amadou Onana according to reports. Amadou Onana's physicality and athleticism would've been a welcome addition to our team and it's something we've struggled with for a long time. Onana alongside Mainoo with Bruno as a attacking midfielder would've been a lot more balanced compared to what Wilcox did when signing Ugarte to replace Mctominay. Ugarte just doesn't have the same level of pace and physicality and neither did he have the ability to progress the ball on the same level as Onana via a pass and a carry forward. Onana's superior aerial and ground qualities for a team wanting to play a more proactive game was the way to go if the choice was between Onana and Ugarte.
The previous football regime was let down by the board imo and even reports emanated from Brazil that the football director at Man Utd had walked away from a deal for Antony, only for the board led by Joe Glazer to undermine him at the end of the window. I provided the links at the time and the journalist from Brazil who provided the info was a highly reputable source for players who represented the club Sao Paulo.
Liverpool, Arsenal and United had planned to sign Mason Mount in that particular transfer window. But we ended up signing him due to him wanting to move to us over those clubs. But the actual plan in that window was to also sign a midfielder and a CB, but they had to shift both Mctominay and Maguire who didn't want to leave according to reports.
I don't have the best memory but are you sure about McTominay refusing to go and it wasn't ETH's decision (to keep)? Considering how much he depended on him, I highly doubt that was the case.
A simple google search gives me this:
https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_...-united-want-52m-plus-scott-mctominay-sources
I'm not sure about the Antony details so I will trust your account on that end. However, I personally think it was a case of both ETH and the previous board, who messed things up. ETH with his preference towards a certain profile of players that was not suited for the team or PL football (e.g Mount, McTominay, Antony etc) and the board not doing their own diligence on what the squad needed. So far at least with this board, there has been better recruitment (Ugarte probably notwithstanding).
It was Fulham that wanted Mctominay in that particular transfer window and according to several reliable media outlets, Mctominay turned them down. And the situation was such according to reports, that we had to move players on before signing new players. And with Mount, a slot opened up with several departures for footballing and non footballing reasons.
Let me make a distinction between the boardroom members and the footballing structure at the time. It was widely reported about there being a budget of around £100m to spend (some reported even less than that) and that was the budget that was given to the footballing personnel at the club who led the football structure post Solskjaer. So when you have a small budget and the issues the team faced post Solskjaer were pretty vast with many positions needing upgrades, you just cannot sign players like Antony for anywhere close to the price Ajax wanted. Hence with that budget the footballing structure led by John Murtough walked away from a deal for Antony according to a very reliable Brazilian journalist who mainly covered Sao Players past and present. And one of the reasons why I believe Murtough was happy to walk away from signing Antony was due to the fact that he had already signed two young wing forwards in Amad and Garnacho for the left and right side of the attack. They were both his players.
But according to the The Athletic, after we'd lost the first two games against Brighton and Brentford, the board of directors led by Joel Glazer, dipped into the revolving credit facility and went ahead and signed Antony for a ridiculous sum of money. And it was reported that Glazer got both Cliff Baty and Michael Stewart involved and they oversaw the deal for Antony as far as the money is concerned.
So in a hypothetical scenario, I'm a member of the board of directors and you're the DoF at the club overseeing the development of the team. I give you a budget of £100m to spend and you plan with that £100m for most of the summer. And with only weeks left in the transfer window, I change the budget and provide an extra £100m from the club's credit card. Now if you think about it, if the whole amount was available at the start of the window, would your planning be different. I think it would be different because you'd have much more money to play with and have tingle to plan how to develop the team. So that's why I say there's a difference between members of the board and people who are working in a footballing capacity at the club. These are two different functions.