The battle between Liverpool and Chelsea for Moises Caicedo broke out just before the start of the Premier League season.
It was Liverpool who tried to hijack Chelsea, who had been trying to sign the player during the summer, and it spilled over to Southampton midfielder Romeo Lavia, whom Liverpool had originally targeted.
It was the Reds who first reached an inter-club agreement with Brighton. After preparing the contract and suppressing medical, they negotiated with the player’s side, but he wanted to go to London.
Then, after an agreement was reached with the Blues on a transfer fee, the deal was completed in no time at all.
Liverpool missed out on their main target, Lavia, and found themselves in the worst possible situation as the transfer deadline loomed. Brighton CEO Paul Barber looks back on the events of the time and puts the sequence of events in order, but insists that it was all the player’s decision.
“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,”
“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.”
talkSPORT