David Moyes understands that no one player is bigger than the club and sometimes star players must be sold for them to achieve great things at bigger clubs.
While manager at Everton between 200-2013 Moyes sold two star players and re-invested the money.
Wayne Rooney was sold by Moyes in 2004 after the young striker slapped in a transfer request. Everton received £25.6m from Manchester United, a transfer record for an under 20 year old at the time.
Joleon Lescott also submitted a transfer request in 2009 which Moyes reluctantly accepted with the centre back joining Manchester City for a reported £22m.
Moyes approached the subject earlier this year before lockdown in a pre-match conference at Rush Green reported by Claret and Hugh at the time by saying “If you are a star player, you want to play for the star teams. That is what happens – you lose your better players.
“If you can recruit in the right way along that journey – I was always trying to bring in the new Wayne Rooney’s and Joleon Lescott’s while keeping momentum. That is the idea, but everybody has got the same data and it is not easy.”
There is no suggestion that David Moyes wants to put Declan Rice is up for sale or that the defensive midfielder is about to hand in a transfer request but equally it would be foolish to believe he will emulate his captain mark Noble in racking up 500 appearances as a Hammer.
Today in a London Evening Standard interview Moyes said “At the moment there have been no offers for Declan and we don’t want any. There’s always interest but we don’t want to encourage it.”
