Chelsea are set to land Moises Caicedo in a £115m deal from Brighton & Hove Albion after a transfer battle with Liverpool
- 13:00, 14 AUG 2023
Chelsea owner Todd Boehly and his Liverpool counterpart John Henry (Image: Getty Images)
After one of the most intriguing transfer sagas in Premier League history, Liverpool are set to lose out to Chelsea for midfielder Moises Caicedo.
After Liverpool agreed a sensational £111m deal with Brighton & Hove Albion on Friday, Chelsea continued to push to find a way to make a deal work while having to be mindful of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability regulations after their unprecedented spend of more than £750m since the arrival of Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital as owners in May 2022.
According to multiple reports, Chelsea are now in agreement with Brighton over a £115m deal for Caicedo, after having four previous bids rejected, with the Reds now forced to move on to other options to solve their defensive midfield issue.
Under Boehly and Clearlake, the Stamford Bridge side have dramatically changed the transfer landscape. Having signed Enzo Fernandez for a British transfer record £105m in January, they are now set to smash that record once again with the capture of Caicedo.
In offering contracts of seven, eight and nine years, last year and early this year, Chelsea were spreading the cost of transfer fees over a longer period through what is known as amortisation. That is where the guaranteed transfer fee of a player, not including add-ons, is spread for accounting purposes over the life of a contract, with the longer the deal the smaller the annual amortised cost in the club accounts.
Chelsea’s adoption of this tactic had irked some of their rivals across Europe and led UEFA, European football’s governing body, to introduce new regulations that would limit the period of time over which transfers can be amortised, although there was no limit placed on how long contracts could be offered for to players.
These new UEFA regulations came into force earlier this summer, although they do not look retrospectively at transfers, which means Chelsea’s business that had already been concluded prior would not fall foul of regulations.
The rules, however, only apply to UEFA’s Financial Fair Play framework, which is only applicable to clubs who are competing in UEFA competitions. The Premier League has its own set of regulations that as yet do not prohibit amortising deals over longer periods. That means for this season, with regards to the Premier League, the teams that are impacted are Manchester City, Arsenal, Manchester United, Newcastle United, Liverpool, Brighton and Aston Villa.
After their dismal 12th-placed finish last season, Chelsea do not, for this season at least, have to be limited by the five-year rule change imposed by UEFA.
In relation to the Caicedo deal, done over what is reported to be an eight-year contract with an option for an extra year at a guaranteed sum of £100m with £15m in add-ons, Chelsea would see an amortised transfer cost of £12.5m over eight years. Liverpool, if offering the same guaranteed £100m sum, would have had a £20m per year amortisation charge, 60% more than Chelsea.
Chelsea’s transfer dealings are not without risk as any deals done post the introduction of the UEFA regulations mean that should Mauricio Pochettino’s men make it back into any UEFA competition from the Champions League to the Europa Conference League next season, then they would have to adjust their submissions based on five-year amortisation calculations, something that would significantly impact their FFP position.
The view is that Chelsea are playing a long game and trying to put together a team that can stay together for a number of years and that will require far less spend in the future, with player sales, increased revenues and the return of the lucrative Champions League all factors that will enable them to comply. But it carries risk if it doesn’t work, with the model making it far harder to move players on at a profit who haven’t performed given the high book value that they will continue to hold.
It is a window of opportunity for Chelsea to make what they will see as their final strides in the transfer market to build what they hope will be a side that dominates in seasons to come. For Liverpool, they will continue to be bound by UEFA’s guidelines in a transfer market that Chelsea played a significant role in inflating to the point where the Reds have had to spend big to keep up.