The ideal £80m signing who could transform Chelsea’s midfield in bold summer rebuild

Steven Gerrard has joined Saudi Arabian outfit Ettifaq, which is rather fitting given that I involuntarily made a very similar-sounding exclamation upon hearing the news. The Scouse poster boy’s managerial career has blown off (yeah) course like a polystyrene frisbee, and now he finds himself wrangling humongous skeletons among the grubby sands of football’s shiniest new elephant graveyard.

Perhaps what makes Gerrard’s sudden retreat to the Middle East so difficult to comprehend is the fact that he was so dependably unspontaneous during his own playing career. He remains, to this day, the archetypal one-club man - like Francesco Totti before him, or a professional mini-golfer.

But, of course, there was a point at which that almost all changed. Gerrard, famously, came within a whisker of swapping the red of Liverpool for the blue of Chelsea during the hazy summer of 2005 amid a salvo of suggestions that he felt he had outgrown his boyhood club. He didn’t, and he hadn’t, but how different things could have been.

As for Chelsea, how they could do with signing a Gerrard in the coming weeks. Mauricio Pochettino has inherited squad that is, at best, imbalanced, and at worst, unfit for purpose. With Todd Boehly taking a shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach to his recruitment strategy, the Blues are still a considerable number of lightyears away from being the finished or genuine article, and high on their list of redemptive priorities this summer is a new central midfielder.

The arrival of Enzo Fernandez for a British record fee in January did little but highlight the lack of substance around him, like a fresh tattoo that emphasises how pallid and bare the surrounding skin truly is, and the departures of N’Golo Kante, Mateo Kovacic, and Ruben Loftus-Cheek - plus, the anticipated exit of Mason Mount - have left Chelsea looking a touch threadbare in the centre of the park.

A new addition is needed, then, and few prospective candidates would be better than Moises Caicedo. It’s no secret that the Blues are interested in the Brighton star; prized transfer truffle pig Fabrizio Romano reported as recently as Saturday that talks between the two clubs are set to continue this week, with personal terms already agreed. The bookies also have Chelsea firmly installed as the favourites to lure the Ecuadorian away from the south coast, and there are claims that £80 million could be enough to finally convince Albion into a sale.

Unlike pretty much every other investment Boehly has made recently, with the possible exception of his luminescent teeth whitening procedure, this could prove to be money well spent. One of the biggest issues that Chelsea encountered as they dragged themselves towards the conclusion of last season, limp and bleeding like a fox that had narrowly escaped the baying hunt, was a lack of guile in key areas. Their midfield was, in large parts, lethargic, disjointed, and ineffective.

Whether one man is capable of solving such obvious systemic problems is hard to say, but at the very least, on the evidence of what we’ve seen during his stint with Brighton, Caicedo should inject a little bit of life into Pochettino’s engine room. He is both an adhesive and a stimulant, able to bind and invigorate in equal measure. His ability to read and break up play is superb, as is his range of distribution and his proclivity for stepping onto the front foot with the ball in his possession. In short, Caicedo is a well-rounded, adaptable talent, and the kind of signing that makes sense for a squad who need vast improvement in several aspects.

Much of the idle speculation and chatter this summer has been laser-beamed in on Declan Rice, and where the West Ham captain will end up playing his football come the opening day of the new campaign. Arsenal look to have won that particular race, for what it’s worth, but the sneaking feeling otherwise has been that Caicedo might be considered something of a silver medal, a de facto, ‘we have Declan Rice at home’ alternative for those of more modest means.

That might not necessarily be the case, though. According to the stats gurus at Whoscored, the South American made more tackles per 90 minutes than his English counterpart in the Premier League last term, and a near-identical number of interceptions. Offensively, he made more key passes per game, and just 0.1 fewer successful dribbles, while his pass completion rate was also higher. Caicedo, simply put, is no slouch whatsoever.

Would it be bold for Chelsea to sign him? In the sense that it would be a complete and sudden departure from their recent precedent of recruiting players who have little to no positive impact on their actual fortunes, yes. But in another, much less sarcastic sense, perhaps it wouldn’t be at all.

Caicedo is a player of obvious potential, with an admirable amount of pedigree already to offer. Chelsea need a midfielder this summer, and the Brighton man feels like as good a punt as any.