Chelsea great Frank Leboeuf insists Moises Caicedo is now worth double what the Blues paid to bring him to Stamford Bridge two years ago.
The Ecuador international scooped Chelsea’s Player of the Year award last season and has started the 2025-26 campaign in thrilling fashion.
A masterful midfield performance against Liverpool on Sunday saw Gary Neville christen him ‘the best in the league’ ahead of Declan Rice.
Caicedo didn’t come cheap – with Chelsea signing him from Brighton for what was a British record fee of £115million, a record since broken by Florian Wirtz’s move to Liverpool.
The midfielder sometimes struggled to live up to that huge price tag during his first season at Stamford Bridge but former Chelsea star Leboeuf believes that fee now looks like a relative bargain.
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Comparing him to former midfield powerhouses in Claude Makeke and N’Golo Kante, Leboeuf suggests Caicedo makes life ‘simple’ for his teammates.
‘Remember the first season, they paid £100million and we were wondering, is he worth it? But now he is worth more than that, double that,’ Leboeuf told ESPN.
‘Because that guy gives you such business in the middle of the park, that for the others, it makes things simpler. It’s easier.
‘We go back to the previous generation of defensive midfielder, Wisey [Dennis Wise], Claude Makeke and N’Golo Kante, those fantastic p[layers that give their lives every game.
‘We used to call them water carriers, they were in the shade of the others. They were the bad people destroying everything, David Batty, the fantastic Roy Keane.
‘But those players are completely essential to a team and they are the fixed wall to make sure the team ius going to work and Caicedo is showing that to the world.
‘What we saw against Liverpool, it was absolutely exceptional.’
Caicedo’s performance against Liverpool and another midfield masterclass from Rice against West Ham United has reignited the debate over who is the best midfielder in the league.
While Caicedo and Rice are in sensational form, former Premier League midfielder is adamant Manchester City’s Rodri is still top dog when fully fit.
‘Rodri is better than all of them. Levels ahead of them,’ he said of the Spaniard, who has won four titles as well as the Ballon d’Or since he joined Manchester City from Atletico Madrid for £62.8million back in 2019.
‘For two or three seasons, Rodri’s level were nothing short of magnificent, absolutely magnificent.’