Moisés Caicedo and Roméo Lavia both opted to join Chelsea over Liverpool, but no matter how the Blues slice it, you feel as if the latter may have made a mistake.
Liverpool may have hoped that Moisés Caicedo’s move to Chelsea would prove to be advantageous in its pursuit of secondary target Roméo Lavia, but in the end, the opposite was true.
According to The Athletic, Caicedo actually texted Lavia, who had become disillusioned by the Reds’ Premier League-record $140m (£110m/€129m) offer for the Brighton man after they had repeatedly refused to pay Southampton’s asking price. The newest Stamford Bridge recruit expressed his excitement at the prospect of playing alongside him.
Naturally, the question is whether the duo, bought for a combined $220m (£174m/€203m) can play together, or whether one will be favored over the other.
Chelsea’s data department apparently believes that they complement each other well, characterizing Caicedo as a midfielder who thrives out of possession, and Lavia as an on-ball specialist.
But those labels appear overly arbitrary. To begin with Caicedo: yes, he ranked second in the Premier League last season for total tackles (100), but his numbers in possession were also outstanding.
He placed inside the league’s top 10 for overall for passes completed, demonstrating his importance in Brighton’s build-up, and he was right up there for ball retention too — second among midfielders for pass completion (88.5 per cent), third for passing accuracy under pressure (86 per cent), and fourth for long pass success rate (79.2 per cent).
You might see these figures and assume that Caicedo is simply playing it safe with his pass selection, but that wouldn’t be accurate. He was a top-20 player last year for passes into the final third (181), progressive passes (219) and defense-splitting through balls (11). This is someone who’s as precise as he is brave with the ball at his feet.
Indeed, FBRef ranks Liverpool’s Thiago as the second-most similar player based on the data, and you certainly wouldn’t label the Spaniard as a pure destroyer.
What about Lavia? Well, there’s no denying that his press-resistance is perhaps his standout quality — we covered it here, comparing him to former Manchester United player Paul Pogba in his agility, guile and strength — but he was also a high-volume ball-winner.
No Southampton player made more tackles (2.43), blocks (1.9) or interceptions (3.77) last season, and while you’d generally expect that from the number six, it shows the defensive responsibilities were largely delegated to him rather than his partners.
Extending the focus to the Premier League as a whole, only 15 midfielders (minimum 800 minutes played) won possession more often per 90 minutes (7.5), and in the big five leagues as a whole, he was one of just three teenagers, along with Borussia Dortmund’s Jude Bellingham and Real Madrid’s Eduardo Camavinga, to make more than 60 tackles outright (via The Analyst
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