Liverpool have been warned that Chelsea’s success in beating them to the signature of Moises Caicedo may have ruined their hopes of winning this season’s Premier League title. Jurgen Klopp was left reeling in the summer when Caicedo turned down a move to Anfield despite Brighton accepting a nine-figure bid for his services.
Caicedo ended up joining Chelsea for a transfer fee of around £115million, with Liverpool going on to pursue other targets in the middle of the park. Former Reds playmaker Don Hutchinson believes that his old club may live to regret their failure to sign Caicedo, especially if they miss out on Premier League glory at the end of the season.
“I like [Alexis] Mac Allister, but he’s not a specialised number six, that’s why they were in for Caicedo,” Hutchinson told BBC Radio 5 Live. “If Liverpool had signed Caicedo in the summer, I would’ve made them favourites to win the league. I think that’s exactly what they need, someone who will sit and protect.”
Liverpool have not exactly missed Caicedo in spite of their failure to sign him, with the Reds sitting just one point behind Premier League leaders Arsenal at the top of the table. The likes of Wataru Endo and Dominic Szoboszlai have been consistently impressive in the engine room and will be hoping to keep winning their midfield battles for the rest of the campaign.
Caicedo, meanwhile, has struggled to get going at Chelsea since moving to Stamford Bridge at the end of the previous campaign. Klopp recently joked that Liverpool were ‘lucky’ in their failure to land Caicedo and fellow summer target Romeo Lavia, who also snubbed the Merseyside giants in favour of their west London rivals.
Reflecting on Liverpool’s summer business earlier this month, Klopp said: “We had a few strange things happen in the transfer market but here, between us, I can say we were lucky, eh? We didn’t know in that moment and it didn’t feel like it in that moment.
“But yeah, I’m really happy that it worked out, but you never know before. We obviously realised that other central defensive midfielders don’t want to join Liverpool, you see what happens.”
Liverpool ended up signing Endo to boost their midfield ranks in the same holding role that would have been occupied by Caicedo. The Japan international was initially viewed as a stop-gap solution but has since established himself as a key asset for the Reds, starting in each of their last four Premier League matches.
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