Liverpool agree £110m British record transfer after winning midnight ‘auction’

Moises Caicedo with the Liverpool and Chelsea badges.
Liverpool have outbid Chelsea for Brighton midfielder Moises Caicedo.

Liverpool have agreed a £110m British record transfer fee for Brighton midfielder Moises Caicedo after the Seagulls held a late-night auction.

Chelsea had been leading the race for the Ecuadorean all summer but had refused to get close to Brighton’s £100m asking fee; it is thought that they breached that number only when pushed into an ‘auction’ with midnight as the deadline.

But Liverpool went further and Brighton accepted their £110m bid for a player they bought for just £4m two years ago. Even by Brighton’s standards, that is extraordinary business.

Caicedo will now agree personal terms and agree a medical with Liverpool despite previously having his heart set on a move to Chelsea.

He will now join his former Brighton teammate Alexis Mac Allister at Liverpool, with their midfield regeneration complete in one summer after the exits of Fabinho and Jordan Henderson to Saudi Arabia.

Chelsea will presumably now move on to the completion of their move for Romeo Lavia after they bid £48m for the Belgian, who had been the subject of Liverpool interest all summer.

This is an unexpected move from Liverpool owners FSG, who had been reluctant to break their own transfer record, set with the £75m capture of Virgil van Dijk.

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“I think with Liverpool – and I have said this before, and it is coming this moment – the last two years, Chelsea have spent huge, Arsenal have spent huge, United have spent huge, City to be fair, are City and I think it’s caught them out,” Gary Neville said on The Overlap.

“It’s caught the owners out. They haven’t got the money to compete, I think it’s shocked them the market. You know, the [Jude] Bellingham deal, £100-odd-million, [Declan] Rice £100-odd-million, [Enzo] Fernandez £100-odd-million, [Moises] Caicedo £100m.

“I think they’re at that £50m, 60m and they’re comfortable there, but I think they’ve hit the point where at they’ve hit the ceiling and they’re at a lower level than the other four, five clubs.

“It’s going to come and hit them like a ton of bricks at some point.

“They should just be going to get the money for Caicedo now for [Klopp] and say ‘right, that’s dealt with and sorted, that’s £100m’,” he continued.

“But they’re not they’re trying to pinch someone off Southampton for £40m, who is a good player, don’t get me wrong. But Jurgen Klopp needs the real deal.

“But if we’re talking about what we were talking about before about challenging Manchester City, they can’t do it with a player that has potential, they need to do it with a player that’s real.”

It seems Liverpool were listening.

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