Ken Early: Moises Caicedo transfer a case study in Premier League hysteria

The phrase “winning the transfer market” has been in use for a few years now, but there was a while on Thursday night and Friday when it felt like a portal to the pure dimension of the transfer market had opened and sucked us all in. Liverpool and Chelsea had simultaneously decided that Moises Caicedo and only Moises Caicedo was the answer, and the Brighton midfielder was poised to move to one of them for a British record transfer fee – but which one?

By Friday afternoon both “Caicedo” and “Caceido” were trending in the UK. A transfer battle between two big clubs, with armies of hysterical fans gobbling up fresh fake news served up every few seconds by a breathless array of liars and chancers, became a real-time Twitter superspectacle which, frankly, proved more enthralling than an actual football match between the clubs (the last four of which have finished 0-0).

The Caicedo saga is a case study in hysteria. Chelsea bid £55 million (€64 million) for him in January, then spent much of the summer refusing to meet Brighton’s valuation of £80 million. Meanwhile, Liverpool seemed to be dithering in the budget aisle, lodging several bids for Southampton’s Romeo Lavia which increased in tiny increments. Then Chelsea dramatically outbid Liverpool for Lavia, only for Liverpool to dramatically outbid Chelsea for Caicedo, with an astounding £111 million offer that broke with all their established patterns of behaviour under the current ownership.

It was clear that for both clubs the force propelling Caicedo’s price to record-breaking levels was pure panic

By the evening Chelsea, who last week had baulked at £80 million, were desperately trying to put together a package worth nearly £120 million. Todd Boehly was said to have sidelined co-sporting director Paul Winstanley to assume personal control of the salvage operation.

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It was clear that for both clubs the force propelling Caicedo’s price to record-breaking levels was pure panic. Both seemed to have convinced themselves that this was about more than just one admittedly rather useful player, that somehow the entire credibility of their project was at stake.

In Liverpool’s case, unexpected raids from the Saudi Pro League had filled the bank account while emptying out the midfield. Two days before kick-off, their vaunted midfield rebuild amounted to five midfielders out and two in: in other words, a shambles. With fans in uproar, they needed something big to arrest the sense of decline engulfing the club.

As for Boehly, his entire identity as a football club owner is built around signing star players. To be gazumped like this after tracking the player for months – the way he gazumped Arsenal in January over Mikhaylo Mudryk – would damage his brand, perhaps terminally.

The Chelsea chairman is a victim of his own decision to pay £105 million for Enzo Fernandez in January. That set the market at a level where West Ham demanded a similar sum for Declan Rice, which in turn entitled Brighton to seek a similar fee for Caicedo. Accounts vary over whether Rice’s fee was slightly above or slightly below Fernandez’s, but assuming West Ham are correct that it was slightly above, it will mean the British transfer record will have been broken three times in the same year.

That would be the first time this has happened since 1995 when the effects of the first wave of Premier League money were beginning to take hold. Curiously, all three of 2023′s record-breakers are central midfielders. Back in 1995, the big money was going on strikers: Andy Cole to Manchester United for £7 million, Dennis Bergkamp to Arsenal for £7.5 million and Stan Collymore to Liverpool for £8.5 million.

The sudden inflationary surge this year is down to Boehly and the Saudis, who between them have pumped more than a billion euros into the European transfer market over the last year

As transfer fees have spiralled upwards it’s become increasingly rare to see English clubs break their own records. From 2000 until 2022, the British transfer record was broken only five times by English clubs. In 2001, Juan Sebastian Veron moved to Manchester United for £28 million; in 2002, Rio Ferdinand to Manchester United for £29 million; in 2006, Andrei Shevchenko to Chelsea for £30 million; in 2008, Robinho to Manchester City for £32 million; in 2016, Paul Pogba to Manchester United for £89 million. We know now that four of these five transfers failed abjectly. The transfer market represents the perpetual triumph of hope over experience.

The sudden inflationary surge this year is down to Boehly and the Saudis, who between them have pumped more than a billion euro into the European transfer market over the last year. Strange to say, the sudden Saudi interest in football is more comprehensible and coherent than whatever it is Boehly is trying to achieve.

The ambitions of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 plan have been trumpeted around the world: new cities gleaming in the desert, the world’s fossil-fuel superpower becoming a leader in green energy. The Saudis are using their vast wealth in the present to bet big on the future, and their investments in sports like football, golf, Formula One and boxing are only a small if highly visible component. What will come of it? One should probably be sceptical of any national future-proofing plan that involves paying $200 million (€182 million) to Phil Mickelson, but unlike with Boehly, at least we all understand where the Saudi money is coming from.

As for the secondary matter of the Premier League. Maybe the reason the transfer window continues to dominate football’s head space is because it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Manchester City winning the actual football. To make a case for City not winning their fourth title in a row in 2024 you have to look to history: nobody has done it before and there must be a good reason for that. They’ve just won the Treble, surely there will be a slackening? Satedness, entropy – even City cannot be immune?

They have lost good players: Ilkay Gundogan to Barcelona, Riyad Mahrez to Saudi Arabia. Kevin De Bruyne was running on fumes for weeks before his hamstring went in the Champions League final. He’s had eight years of brilliance already at City, how many more is it reasonable to expect?

Yet the sale of Mahrez only makes more room for Julian Alvarez and Phil Foden, two players who would start for nearly every other Premier League team but spent much of last season on City’s bench. Mateo Kovacic is a decent Gundogan replacement, with Lucas Paqueta perhaps next to arrive, and Pep Guardiola has reinforced an already-powerful defence with the elegant giant Josko Gvardiol, generally regarded as the best young central defender in Europe. The signing of Gvardiol continues the recent trend of City securing the effective number-one draft pick in the market each summer, after Erling Haaland and Jack Grealish.

Rice and Kai Havertz add substance and style to Arsenal’s midfield, but their attack still leans too heavily on the brilliant young forwards Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli

They did not, at least, get Rice, though you wonder how much of their interest in him was designed to drive up the price for Arsenal. Ultimately the decision was down to Rice. His choice was between becoming another expensive cog in the City machine – shuttling between roles in midfield and defence according to Guardiola’s whims – or trying to be Arsenal’s new Patrick Vieira with the prospect of ending a great club’s longest drought between titles (it will be 20 years this season). City can always offer more money and titles, but Rice knows that Arsenal means something to more people.

Rice and Kai Havertz add substance and style to Arsenal’s midfield, but their attack still leans too heavily on the brilliant young forwards Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli. The arrival of Gabriel Jesus last season helped bring the best out the younger two, but injuries meant he played only 60 per cent of the minutes in the league. Even that was more minutes than he had managed in any of his six previous Premier League seasons. He will need to push himself beyond his limits if Arsenal are to push City to theirs.

Manchester United have strengthened with three major signings in Mason Mount, Rasmus Højlund and goalkeeper André Onana. Onana, in particular, could be a transformative figure, enabling United to play out from the back in a way they never could with David de Gea, for all his shot-stopping quality.

A couple of major issues remain to be resolved. The first involves the sale of the club, which has come to seem increasingly doubtful as the process has dragged on. Planning has had to continue amid the fog of the uncertain Glazer ownership.

The second, perhaps less consequential but more toxic, revolves around the future of Mason Greenwood. The forward has been exiled from the first-team squad since his arrest in January 2022 on suspicions which would lead to him being charged in October 2022 with attempted rape, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and controlling and coercive behaviour.

United should move on and let Greenwood pursue his career elsewhere. There are always other players and it is always unwise for a club to lose sight of the bigger picture by fixating on one in particular

The charges were dropped in February 2023, with a spokesman for the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service saying “a combination of the withdrawal of key witnesses and new material meant there was no longer a realistic prospect of conviction”. The criminal courts, therefore, will not be having anything further to do with Greenwood, but the court of public opinion operates by different rules. One constituency of United fans believes he should be reinstated, while another is disgusted by the idea .

Clearly, United have been considering their options for many months. Confidence in their decision-making process was not improved by a remarkable report that emerged on Friday, suggesting they were waiting to canvass the opinions of the three United players in England’s squad at the Women’s World Cup before making their final decision. This was hard to believe: can they really have thought of putting these women in a position where they could be publicly perceived to have had some kind of casting vote on whether Greenwood stays or goes, and will therefore be blamed by one or other camp for whatever outcome transpires? The decision should have nothing to do with them.

A personal view is that the correct decision is obvious. United should move on and let Greenwood pursue his career elsewhere. There are always other players and it is always unwise for a club to lose sight of the bigger picture by fixating on one in particular. Not that you would think it from watching what they do in the transfer market.