Moises Caicedo was yesterday announced as a Chelsea player as Liverpool missed out on a transfer
Brighton CEO Paul Barber has conceded Liverpool “couldn’t have done any more” to complete a deal for Moises Caicedo.
Liverpool agreed a £110million deal for Caicedo in the early hours of Friday morning, though it soon became clear the Ecuadorian midfielder was having second thoughts over a move to Merseyside amid long-standing interest from Chelsea.
The Londoners responded to Jurgen Klopp’s side moving for the youngster by coming back in for the 21-year-old and were able to hijack Liverpool’s agreement by upping their offer to £115m. Such news came as a major blow, particularly as Liverpool also look set to miss out on Romeo Lavia.
Plenty of questions have been raised regarding why Caicedo chose Chelsea over the Reds, who were the first club to have an agreement in place, though Brighton’s CEO has made clear this deal collapsing was not for want of trying.
“First of all, Liverpool is a fantastic football club. For any footballer to have the chance to play at Liverpool, you would imagine they would be running up the M6 and M62, but it wasn’t to be,” Barber told talkSPORT. “Moises and his advisors decided, for whatever reason, that London was their preferred destination and, ultimately, Chelsea.
“In that situation, we’re in a slightly difficult position because we had negotiated a deal, working many days with Liverpool to get a deal agreed and they couldn’t have done any more. They were superb and professional throughout, but then it comes down to the player at that point and we are very much out of the loop because it is a discussion between the player and Liverpool.
“At the point it was clear he wasn’t going to Liverpool, then we have to go into a different mode because, having negotiated a British-record transfer, we’ve then got to do it again three days later. We started working with Chelsea as soon as we realised Liverpool were not able to proceed and, at that point, we’ve got to protect our own interests. Our interests are our player and making sure we realise the value for that player that we were expecting.”