Potter's Caicedo transfer stance hangs Chelsea out to dry

Stuart Telford

• 28 Jan 2023 05:19 CST
• 3 min read

Arsenal are on the cusp of signing Moises Caicedo from Brighton after the player went AWOL. He might have been joining Chelsea instead had Graham Potter not painted his new employers into a corner…

Caicedo has failed to turn up for Brighton training with Arsenal poised to come back in with an improvement on their £60m (€68.4m) bid for the player, 24 hours after he took to social media imploring his current employers to sell him.

"I am proud to be able to bring in a record transfer fee for Brighton which would allow them to reinvest it and help the club continue to be successful," Caicedo posted as part of a fuller message on Twitter on Friday.

READ: Moises Caicedo goes AWOL as Arsenal ready new transfer bid - Fabrizio Romano

Arsenal want greater cover in central midfield behind Thomas Partey and Granit Xhaka, and the Premier League leaders are confident of concluding a deal for the Ecuador international, who cost Brighton just €5m when he joined from Independiente del Valle in February 2021.

Arsenal winning the race for Caicedo over Chelsea will count as sweet revenge after the Blues hijacked their bid for Shakhtar Donetsk winger Mykhailo Mudryk, but the Blues were always likely to be extorted if they got into a bidding war for Caicedo after Potter's words on the player in August.

'You'd probably get his boots for that'

"You'd probably get his boots for that from the chairman," Potter said, when still Brighton manager, when asked about a reported £42m (€47.9m) bid for the midfielder last summer. "Maybe! £100m? They can try.

READ: 'He's gone full Cashley Cole!' - Twitter reacts to Caicedo going AWOL

"As soon as you do research on him you realise he is a top kid, great person, young, playing in the Premier League, has all the attributes to play at the very, very highest level."

Potter replaced Thomas Tuchel in the Chelsea dug-out soon after, and those words have now come back to haunt him.

Arsenal can realistically say they rate the player at the £75m (€85.5m) Brighton are likely to settle for. If Chelsea tried the same, they could reasonably reply that their manager thinks that would perhaps buy his training gear.