Pundit Danny Murphy has claimed that Chelsea midfielder Moises Caicedo is nowhere near Rodri’s level at Manchester City.
The west London club recently broke the English transfer record for the second time in seven months by securing a £115m deal for Caicedo from Brighton & Hove Albion.
With Chelsea once again spending a lot of money on new players, one pundit has had his say on the matter in regards to the club’s ambitions of winning titles.
Murphy says Rodri is miles ahead of Caicedo
Speaking on talkSPORT, Murphy had this to say when asked if Caicedo would get into City’s current team.
He said: “He’s nowhere near Rodri, he doesn’t play instead of Rodri, not in a million years. Doesn’t play instead of [Kevin] De Bruyne, doesn’t play instead of Bernardo Silva.
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“So they’ve gone for Caicedo, fair enough, he could become somebody as effective as Rodri because he’s a super talent, we’ll have to wait and see on that one, but he certainly wouldn’t be ahead of Rodri now.”
Looking back over their previous individual Premier League campaigns, the Spaniard showed in which areas of the game he eclipsed Caicedo in.
For example, in addition to having a higher passing accuracy percentage than the Ecuadorian (91.2% vs 88.5%), Rodri also made more progressive passes (260 vs 219) than him.
From an attacking point of view, the 27-year-old, who scored the winning goal in City’s Champions League final clash against Inter Milan, made more shot-creating actions (92 vs 88) and goal-creating actions (10 vs 5) than the new Chelsea player.
Then in terms of their defensive efforts, Rodri made more recoveries (301 vs 248) and lost fewer challenges (26 vs 28) than the 21-year-old.
With all of that in mind, it’s easy to see why Murphy thinks the City star is ahead of Caicedo in terms of playing ability at this moment in time.