Arsenal ROBBED West Ham for £100m Rice - Moyes

Stuart Telford

10 Mar 2024 08:59 GMT
3 min read

Declan Rice joined Arsenal from West Ham for £100 million in August - a record for both clubs - but David Moyes says his side could have got more for the England midfielder.

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Rice scored the opening goal on Saturday as Arsenal beat Brentford 2-1 to move top of the Premier League - at least until Liverpool's meeting with Manchester City on Sunday.

The former Hammers captain has been in imperious form for Arsenal, and if conditions are met as expected, the £5m worth of add-ons will make him the most expensive Englishman in the Premier League ever, ahead of Jack Grealish.

Rice is now valued at €91.9m (£78.2m) by FootballTransfers' in-house algorithm, but West Ham boss Moyes thinks they could have received nearly twice that figure.

© FootballTransfers.com - Declan Rice's value continues to rise, per FootballTransfers.

Moyes: 'everyone laughed'

"I always said, and I think everyone laughed, that he should be £150m," he said. "I think other players have been sold for close to his price and I don't think they've touched Declan's level of performance.

"The other thing is Declan is English, an England international, and he's 25 now so he's still got another six or seven years of his best years still to come. So, I think in time maybe we'll look back and think it could have been more…"

READ MORE: Latest Arsenal transfer news

Rice has been nominally replaced by England teammate Kalvin Phillips at the base of West Ham's midfield, the former Leeds man joining on loan from Man City in January, but he gifted Dominic Solanke a goal on his debut against Bournemouth, and has been used sparingly since.

Arsenal's massive outlay last summer - as well as Rice they signed Kai Havertz and Jurrien Timber for a combined €115m (£97.9m) - means that they will look to sell before they buy this year.

West Ham could do worse than look to Thomas Partey for another potential Rice replacement, while FootballTransfers recently exclusively revealed that Oleksandr Zinchenko could also be sold.