West Ham Vice-Chairman Karren Brady wants to keep hold of Declan Rice as long as possible while accepting that one club players like Trevor Brooking and Mark Noble are becoming very rare.
Brady wrote in her Sun Football Diary “How much we would like to keep Declan Rice for that long. He’s definitely the type. Not so very long ago, it would be the thing players hoped for. Today players are more mobile, attracted elsewhere by three things — prestige, trophies, money. No, sorry, there is a fourth. They are called agents and too many of them regard one-clubbers as a waste of money.”
Claret and Hugh say:
Rice’s recent form this season and his eventual selection for England next Wednesday will undoubtingly bring many admirers who will try to tempt the youngster over the next few transfer windows. West Ham will tell those who inquire that he is not for sale at any price but we all know everyone has a price and a bid over £90m would be too difficult to turn down. Maybe those mega bids are some way away but if he keeps on improving like he has this season that day will come.
It sounds to me like she is trying to build up Dec’s sale as much as any of the agents she claims to dislike. She says in one sentence hes not for sale then the next we couldn’t reject a mega bid. She is all about business and riding on the coat tails of others. Some of her actions have obviously benefited the club but others still cause concern. I only see the snippets of her column on this site but those that you publish I find detrimental to the club. It’s been said before but I’ll echo it,she needs to end this column now.
All the recent talk, if an offer comes in for over £100 million last week, £90 million according to Brady this week, sounds like they are thinking like business people selling an asset to make a profit. Worse, it sounds like they are actually actively marketing the player for sale. He’s not for sale but offer 90 million and he’s yours is like saying come and get him Manchester. He would be worth far more if we kept him of course. It would be short sighted to sell him, even for £90 million. This boy is potentially the future captain of West Ham and England and you can’t put a price on how much revenue that would generate for our club over the years.
Brady is guilty of being a realist, maybe thinking like the businesswoman she is, and you can guarantee her thoughts and quoted price for Declan are in line with the thoughts of Sullivan and Gold. I doubt she just plucked that figure out of thin air if it hadn’t been discussed with Sully or Gold, but if we are to ever be the big club that Pellegrini wants us to be then we need to keep hold of our best players. And the power of thinking big needs to start at the top, with the board. To effectively advertise Declan Rice is for sale for 90 million does us no favours whatsoever.
Read the story properly chaps Sean Whetstone suggested the figure not Brady
And Brady is a realist Clive she knows if Declan Rice could be worth 90 mill in the summer
and 2 years after that he could be worth 150 or 200 mill and it wont be us selling him it will
be agents priseing him away from us
Yes my mistake. Perhaps it was on here i recently read the 100k figure being banded about also thinking about it. Talk amongst our own fans where it’s accepted that Rice will end up moving on to one of the so called big clubs and speculation as to what his potential sale price would be from our own fans does us no favours either.
On the other hand If Chelsea had kept him we wouldn’t have had him play for us in the first place. Very hard for a young player to break through at Chelsea. Their loss was our gain.