Declan Rice heads into the massive Manchester City clash on Wednesday night with a huge Manuel Pellegrini England endorsement ringing in his ears.
With the controversy over his choice of international status now a thing of the past his future looks outstanding and the Hammers boss has given the most emphatic of decisions on whether he is ready to step straight into the Three Lions set up.
Nobody who has seen the development of his extraordinary talent could think anything other than he is ready NOW which is probably why there was such a battle for his services.
That at such a tender age the reputation of Declan has become so huge is extraordinary but there is clearly far more to come from a player who is truly living up to the Moore comparison – dislike that as much as he may.
Given a normal rate of development – and thus far it has been abnormal – I can personally see no reason why – just like Bob – he shouldn’t skipper the national team and achieve at least close to the status currently reserved for our greatest legend.
And Pellegrini in discussing him Dec and England said: “Yes. I think he is ready to play for England and I think that we are just starting the development of him as a player.
“But at this moment his performances are better than every holding midfielder. I am talking about the English players.
“Maybe there are other foreign players in big teams that are also playing well like Fernandinho but I repeat we are just starting, seeing what will be with Declan in the future.”
He added: “I started with Javier Mascherano when he was 17 years old and he was similar to Declan Rice in his mentality.
“When they are 17 or 19 years old it seemed that they have the mentality of 35 years old.
“When you are 17, 18, 19 years old and arrive to the first team, playing in the first team changes a bit your mind and you think that you are ready but in the case of Declan he knows that he is [just] starting and that is important.
“I didn’t worry that he would be distracted because I know him.
“When there was all the rumours about the contract, that he would renew, that he would not renew, he never had any problems on the pitch.
“He worked exactly the same whether he was earning some amount of money or more amount of money or if he was going to play for Ireland or England.
“He never changed. He has the mind of a mature player.
“He is always listening when you talk to him, always trying to learn from another player that has more experience and you see that he is improving in every training session he does here.”