Chelsea have Wigan Athletic to thank for spotting double Europa League winner | OneFootball

Wigan took advantage of Palace situation and Chelsea were the eventual side to benefit

Wigan Athletic have produced many top talents who have gone on to bigger and better things down the years, and Victor Moses is a shining example of that.

A teenage prodigy at Crystal Palace in his youth, Moses made his first-team debut at the age of just 16 for the South Londoners, and has never looked back since then, going on to claim silverware in a career that is still going on now.

Because he broke onto the scene at such a young age, it's hard to believe Moses is still playing now, but it may shock some to know that he's actually only 33, so he perhaps has another couple of seasons left in him.

He currently turns out for Luton Town in the Championship, and while that is a far cry from the heady heights he managed in the 2010's when he was gracing the Premier League and the European stage, the fact he's still playing 17 years after his debut is testament to his professionalism.

He has Palace to thank for giving him the platform to make such a decorated career, but it's Wigan Athletic who should take special praise for morphing him into the player he became.

Moses' career took off at Wigan

Moses swapped the bright lights of London for Wigan in the winter transfer window of 2010, with the Latics spending a reported £2.5m to secure his services.

While that money seems like small fry in the modern game, back then it was a respectable fee that Wigan stumped up for a relatively unknown young talent.

But the faith shown to give him a chance in the Premier League was certainly repaid over time, despite a slow start to his Wigan career, which saw him limited mainly to substitute appearances in his first 18 months as he tried to get up to speed in the top-flight.

It was the 2011/12 season where he really came into his own in a Wigan shirt, and although the six goals he netted that season could be deemed unremarkable to many, his performances in a side battling at the wrong end of the table were to be admired, not to mention he played all 38 league games that term.

He was influential towards the end of that season in a Latics side who pulled off one of the greatest escapes the Premier League has ever seen, securing wins against Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United in their final nine games to stay up.

That evidently caught the eye of Chelsea, who swooped the following summer, stumping up a reported £9m to land Moses, handing Wigan a tidy profit on a player who left a lasting legacy.

Eyebrows were raised when Chelsea signed Moses, as with the riches they had at the time, signing players for little Wigan Athletic came with added pressure.

But Moses proved he was up to that level for the Blues, more so in the Europa League than the Premier League, where he was handed far fewer minutes relative to his number of appearances.

He couldn't have done much more to stake his claim to become a Premier League regular either, as he scored in both quarter-final legs and both semi-final legs to set up a final against Benfica.

After those performances, you'd have assumed he'd be a shoo-in for a starting berth in the final, but that wasn't the case, as he was an unused substitute, in what must've been a crushing psychological blow for the wide man.

Moses played some group games for Chelsea in 2018/19, when they also went on to win the Europa League, and he was also a key member of the 2016/17 Blues side who won the Premier League title, with Antonio Conte utilising him as a right wing-back.

While the silverware would suggest his Chelsea career was a roaring success, the coming and going of managers meant he drifted in and out of favour, and as such he spent most of his career on loan.

It felt like something of a wasted career in some sense, as he was good enough to be a top-flight regular, but it's hard to argue that he hasn't had a successful career when you consider his Chelsea impact.