Kepa is certainly a panic buy for Chelsea - but still a deal that gives them an excellent goalkeeper for his prime years

The Spaniard is a brilliant young player from an academy with a record of producing quality

It was only a year ago that Manchester City spent €40m (£33m) on Ederson, a goalkeeper with one international cap, to make him the most expensive goalkeeper ever.

As it turns out, with four of the five most costly goalkeepers in history moving since, City appear to have been ahead of the curve in picking up an elite shot-stopper for a relative bargain.

At the conclusion of the Ederson deal , one that raised eyebrows initially, City officials said that by the end of the summer that price would look like a good one. A year on, it looks even better.

Ederson has won the Premier League and EFL Cup with Manchester City since signing (Getty)

That is not necessarily to say that Chelsea are overpaying for Kepa, an €80m (£71m) goalkeeper who just like Ederson has a sole international cap to his name. But they are paying the top-of-the-market rate at a time when the market has spiralled out of control.

At 23, you can justify such an outlay on a player if you are sufficiently convinced he will be the long-term answer at the position, and in goal that is even more obvious. David De Gea's signing by Manchester United comes to mind, though that deal was clearly more thought out than Kepa's surprise arrival in West London.

Had Chelsea been long-term suitors of Kepa who thought he could be their number 1 for the next decade then they could have got him for a quarter of this price back in January. But they didn't.

This is undeniably a panic move from the Blues but they have nonetheless secured a fine young goalkeeper who will repay them with performance after performance. He is a brilliant reaction stopper, his long kicking is excellent and his short-passing game is good enough for La Liga. Bulk and dominance will come with experience and a specially-designed training programme.

Pepe Reina has been a mentor to the youngster and told Kepa that playing under Sarri, as Reina had done at Napoli, would be a great move for his career and that helped convince the 23 year-old that this was the right time for him to make a big move.

The most obvious comparison for Kepa, as a big-money, highly-rated young Spanish goalkeeper who arrived in the Premier League, is De Gea but his path to the top is actually more similar to a player like Jordan Pickford.

While Kepa might be compared to De Gea, his path is more similar to Pickford's (AFP/Getty Images)

Like Pickford, Kepa began his career in the youth system of a big club in the north and was farmed out on loan to gain experience. On promotion to first-team duties, both impressed and won their respective number 1 jobs from veteran incumbents on their way to earning a big move away.

Kepa's big move was so nearly to the Spanish capital rather than the English one, with Real Madrid agreeing a deal to take him to the Bernabeu in January for €20m (£17m) only to pull the plug at the last minute when Zinedine Zidane stood up to Florentino Perez and stuck by Keylor Navas.

That prompted Athletic Club - who have an internal replacement ready to go in the shape of either Iago Herrerin or the latest academy product, Alex Remiro - to hand Kepa a contract extension until 2025 and a new release clause of €80m.

Ernesto Valverde, now manager of Barcelona, gave Kepa his Athletic debut (Getty)

Athletic refused to negotiate with Chelsea over that clause, even turning down the opportunity to earn slightly more in instalments, as their unique transfer policy means they need to get every euro possible out of clubs buying their players. With only players from the Basque Country or those who received their footballing education in the Basque Country able to play for Athletic, they are very limited in the pool of players they can use or buy, and thus a top-level player at Athletic Club is worth far more to them because there are times when finding a replacement of that standard will literally be impossible.

What this money will fund for Athletic is not yet clear. They are already sitting on the €65m fee that Manchester City paid for Aymeric Laporte last season too, but while selling young players to fund the return of veterans winding down their career might seem unwise, the availability of Javi Martinez and Ander Herrera next summer won't have escaped the club's attention. Bringing back Herrera would be an immensely popular move, though Martinez left under such a cloud that his reputation might need a little bit of rehabilitation before he is welcomed back into the fold.

22-year-old Real Sociedad forward Mikel Oyarzabal is a long-term target of the San Mames club and has a €50m release clause that is elevated to €60m in the case of Athletic, owing to La Real's determination not to lose players to their Basque rivals. That €60m is now less daunting for a club that has brought in nearly €150m over the last year.

Their extensive network of local clubs in the north of Spain will also continue to feed talented young players into their youth system, where their craft will be refined at Athletic's famous Lezama home. They will continue to create more Kepas, more Laportes and more Ander Herreras knowing that one day they might come home but that, for now, they're going to help fund the next generation.