It seems almost impossible to believe but Declan Rice wanted to leave West Ham on loan last summer after suffering a crisis of confidence at the start of the campaign.
The Hammers and England defensive midfielder was pushing for a loan move to Aston Villa after being subbed at half time in the 4-0 defeat by Liverpool and clearly suffering some anxieties over his immediate future.
He had been pulled out of position for the first goal and was hauled off which then caused him to believe that he needed to get away and learn how to handle the Premier League.
In fact it was all very much in Declan’s head and he returned to the team at Goodison Park and a 3-1 win a month later before eventually notching up 41 appearances for the campaign.
It had been his second hooking having been pulled off by Slaven Bilic at Newcastle in the previous season at Newcastle.
” I wanted to go to Aston Villa under Steve Bruce,” Rice reveals in an exclusive interview for the new issue of FourFourTwo magazine, in shops on Wednesday.
The Hammers were 2-0 down to goals from Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané when Rice was subbed at Anfield last August.
“I remember speaking to Ryan Fredericks on the plane on the way home, and I was thinking that I should go on loan,” he said.
“Being dragged off at Anfield and then being left out of the squad for the next couple of matches, it really made me think.
“I thought, ‘Well, if I’m not going to go on loan, then I have to give it everything here’. I realised that I needed to get much better if I wanted to play in the Premier League.”