Moisés Caicedo’s difficult start rooted in Chelsea’s puzzle-piece structure

Young £115m Ecuador international is no one-dimensional destroyer in developmental side that has collective flaws

When a player joins a club for £115m it is natural to expect instant results. When Moisés Caicedo joined Chelsea, though, he was coming in after a disrupted pre-season and was not slotting into a team with a settled starting XI and a group of experienced characters capable of making it easier for a newcomer to have an immediate impact.

The situation is not equivalent to another midfielder, Declan Rice, making a £105m switch to Arsenal, where everything is far more cohesive. In Chelsea’s case the worry with any player billed as the final piece in the jigsaw is that at some point they end up getting lost down the back of the sofa. This is a puzzle featuring a 23-year-old captain who keeps missing games, a 39-year-old centre-back, a slightly baffled Ukrainian and a striker with as many yellow cards as goals this season. Sometimes the pieces will fit together and everything will look great; sometimes you start Lesley Ugochukwu at Newcastle and lose 4-1.

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