Moises Caicedo has risen in recent years to become one of the best defensive midfielders in the Premier League.
The Ecuadorean first moved to England in February 2021, joining Brighton and Hove Albion from boyhood club Independiente del Valle. But he didn’t make his Premier League debut until April 2022, having spent time on loan at Belgian side Beerschot.
However, once he had those initial Premier League minutes under his belt, it didn’t take Caicedo too long to make an impact. The Ecuadorean grew in Brighton’s midfield to eventually earn a £115million move to Chelsea in the summer of 2023.
After a slow start at the Blues, Caicedo has gone on to become one of their best and most important players. It was capped off by his displays at the recent Club World Cup, which Chelsea won.
So, how has his game evolved over the past four seasons?
Defensive stats
Making his debut in April, Caicedo only played eight Premier League games in the 2021-22 season. So his metrics per 90 minutes from that campaign can be a bit skewed. For example, he only committed seven fouls in his 664 minutes, rounding up to 1.0 per 90. That’s unsurprisingly his best record during his time in the Premier League.
The 2024-25 campaign actually saw Chelsea get more of the man they bought from Brighton, matching his 1.9 fouls per 90 from 2022-23. In 2023-24, Caicedo committed 1.6 fouls per 90. On its own that may sound like a good thing, but Mauricio Pochettino was playing Caicedo in a role that hampered the midfielder. Not to mention the fact that 1.4 of his fouls came from attempted tackles in both 2022-23 and 2024-25 — less than the 1.5 in 2023-24.
Now, 2023-24 was Caicedo’s best season for duels contested, averaging 11.0 per 90 — with 2024-25 and 2022-23 again level at 10.8. But, Caicedo only won 6.2 of those duels per 90. He won 6.4 in 2022-23 and 2024-25, for a better success rate. Particularly in 2024-25, Caicedo was more considered in his duels, becoming a solid ball winner.
Last season was also Caicedo’s best in the Premier League for ground duels won at 5.4 per 90, up 0.2 from his first Chelsea campaign. And it was a 0.1 improvement from his first full season with Brighton. Caicedo has also seen his ground duel success increase season on season.
In his first campaign with Brighton — that spanned just eight league matches — Caicedo won 55.74% of his ground duels. In 2022-23 that improved to 57.55%, and jumped again to 57.69% in his first season with Chelsea. And there was another increase to a 57.97% success rate in Caicedo’s ground duels last season. Sure, there isn’t much change between the years, but they’re all still improvements.
The one thing Caicedo hasn’t matched from his first full season at Brighton is his interceptions. Then, Caicedo made 1.7 interceptions per 90 and only Declan Rice (63) made more interceptions overall during the campaign. That number dropped to 1.2 interceptions per 90 in 2023-24, with a slight rise to 1.4 per 90 last season.
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On the ball
Chelsea didn’t sign Caicedo to be a passer. But Pochettino did use the Ecuadorean more in that role in 2023-24. That was his best campaign overall in a lot of passing metrics — though a decrease in 2024-25 is not necessarily a bad thing. Again we can’t take much from his 2021-22 metrics, as Caicedo didn’t have much time on the pitch. But his low passing and long passing accuracy from that season do tell a story — as you’d normally expect those numbers to be high the fewer minutes a player has played.
In his first full season at Brighton, Caicedo averaged 56.3 passes completed per 90 with 88.77% accuracy. That increased to 59.7 per 90 and 90.8% in his first campaign with Chelsea. As mentioned, this was indicative of the role Pochettino had for Caicedo, getting him on the ball a lot more than expected — with mixed results. Even though Caicedo only completed 52.1 passes per 90 last season, the accuracy didn’t drop by much, still standing above 90%. So Caicedo is passing less, but keeping the accuracy. This also comes with less touches of the ball, at 73 per 90 in 2024-25 compared to 81 in 2023-24. He even averaged more at Brighton in 2022-23, with 78.4 touches per 90.
Long passing wasn’t Caicedo’s strong suit last season, though, with 2.6 completed per 90 and 63.16% accuracy. These are lower than both the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons, with the latter still Caicedo’s best passing campaign.
Caicedo’s passing was a bit more progressive at Brighton, though. In the 2021-22 season, Caicedo averaged 30.7 passes completed in the opposition half per 90 with 15.7 forward passes. In 2023-24, that dropped to 28.4 completed passes in the opposition half and 15.6 forward passes. And while he slightly increased his passes completed in the opposition half to 28.9 last season, Caicedo’s forward passes dropped again to 14.3.
Caicedo had his best campaign for take-ons in 2021-22. But again that’s warped by the lack of attempts, with Caicedo completing seven of 10. Caicedo had a similar number of take-ons completed in 2021-22 and 2022-23, at 0.9 per 90. But he enjoyed a lot more success at Brighton with a 59.18% completion rate compared to 52%. Last season, Caicedo completed slightly fewer take-ons at 0.8 per 90, but he did see his success rate jump to 56.86%. While that’s still not as good as his final season with Brighton, it was an improvement on his maiden Chelsea campaign.
Attacking presence
You don’t rank a defensive midfielder on their attacking output. And we’re not doing that. But sometimes you do like a defensive midfielder to provide some attacking support as a tertiary ability. For this comparison, the 2021-22 season leads in a lot of metrics, purely for the lack of game time.
But overall, Caicedo was more of an attacking threat for Brighton than he is for Chelsea. That’s partly down to teammates. Chelsea have more than enough attacking talent to ensure Caicedo doesn’t really need to get involved in that part of the game.
The Ecuadorean midfielder averaged 0.4 shots per 90 in the 2022-23 season for Brighton, dropping slightly to 0.3 in both 2023-24 and 2024-25 for Chelsea. His accuracy has got progressively worse too, from 61.54% in 2022-23 to 50% in 2023-24 and a shocking 27.27% last season. There were a lot of pot shots in 2024-25, as shown by his 0.1 efforts on target, down from 0.2 in 2023-24 and 0.3 in 2022-23.
Assists and chance creation might be the better way for a defensive midfielder to influence the attack. Again, Caicedo’s numbers were best at Brighton. He averaged 1.3 chances created per 90 in 2022-23, decreasing to 0.7 in 2023-24. That’s a significant drop considering how much time Caicedo had on the ball. But Chelsea also relied heavily on Cole Palmer for everything that season. Caicedo’s chance creation improved slightly to 0.9 last season, but his assists remained the same across the three campaigns at 0.1 per 90. In whole numbers, Caicedo provided one assist in 2022-23, three in 2023-24, and two last season.
Caicedo’s through-balls have also remained the same across the past three seasons, at 0.4 per 90.
What’s next for Caicedo?
Enzo Maresca has Caicedo in the perfect role at Chelsea, not wasting any of his abilities.
So we should see a similar campaign to 2024-25 and 2022-23 in terms of defensive output in 2025-26. But, ideally for Chelsea fans, the numbers would get even better. Some fans and Maresca may also want to see the passing numbers increase, just in case the Blues need a Plan B or C should Enzo Fernandez not be available.
The scary thing is that Caicedo is still only 23. So he does have a lot of room to grow even further.