Vladimir Coufal has revealed that Declan Rice visited the home dressing room ahead of the Carabao Cup clash last night.
The former Irons skipper said a hello to the boys asking them how they were all getting along before suffering defeat at their hands a bit later.
In between times he received a warm welcome from the fans when he appeared for the warm up before the game but was booed every time he touched the ball – a tradition going back years – when he appeared as a second half sub,
As is usually the case, he rarely put a foot wrong during the time he was on the pitch but that couldn’t account for the Hammers total superiority as they cruised to their comfortable 3-1 victory.
Coufal may annoy a few fans with part of his comments after the game in declaring that he believes the former skipper deserved his move to north London.
He said: “He’s doing an incredible job at Arsenal and we all wish him the best. He did an unbelievable job here, he lifted a trophy after 50 years for West Ham and he deserved this move to Arsenal.
“I can’t say anything against him because he’s an unbelievable player and he is even better at Arsenal.”
It’s great to hear Rice was so respectful to his old team on his return to the London Stadium.
Some fans always complain and have their own views on loyalty which is fair enough, he was an incredible player for us, is showing different skills at Arsenal in honesty just as he did with us he is continuing to improve game by game, wish him well and will always be grateful for his time with us, when most players would have taken the massive wages on offer and still then insisted on being sold he didn’t, as DS said he could have cost us an additional £10m in wages but he stayed on what he was on for two plus seasons and transferred when the bid came in and after delivering us our first European trophy (excluding the inter toto) in nearly 60 years.
When Citeh dropped out of the race to buy him I had some hopes that he would stay but he was honest enough to state that he wanted to win big. He preferred London so there could only be 3 possibilities in Chelsea (doubtful) Arsenal or Spurs. After the hot reception he got a lukewarm follow up. The boos for Ince lasted years- Rice is a gent and should be wished well
and we should look forward to beating them again in our climb up the table.