West Ham vice chair Karren Brady has explained what regular readers of Claret and Hugh new weeks ago, that the club did everything in their power to keep Declan Rice at West Ham.
But in the end of course everything the board attempted was refused with Declan and his father Sean refusing all offers of wage increases.
Declan scored for his new club Arsenal against Manchester United and made it clear afterwards that he now has to forget his years as a Hammer.
Now Brady – talking on talkSPORT on 3 September, the Hammers’ vice-chairman revealed that the club “tried everything” to try and keep hold of the England international.
But in the end it proved impossible with the defensive midfielder determined to strut his stuff with a Champions League involved Club.
Brady made it clear that the 24-year-old wanted to leave the London Stadium this summer and it became her “job to sell him” as the midfielder made his £105million switch to the Gunners back in July.
She said: “My job was to sell him. We did not want to sell him, he made a decision that he wanted to go. Having made that decision, my job was to get the best possible price for him, so the club could go back in again and make every penny of that count and I think that’s exactly what we did.
“It’s very difficult when a player doesn’t want to stay, I mean we tried everything we could to convince him to stay. In terms of the contract, we had been speaking to his father for about two years.
“We tried to build a team around him, he’s a special player and a gentleman, a very nice young man to have around and a great captain.”
In the circumstances we are likely to come out of this with a stronger and more varied playing squad. We could not have afforded the players brought in without Declan leaving as we would fall foul of FFP regulations in Europe.
Well it’s an interesting and reflective weekend. Dec has done well for his new club, and to be fair, has done well for us being home grown and raising that massive investment money which we are already benefitting from. It was great to see Reece Burke have a really good game for Luton, and I understand that Dan Potts is doing really well but injured. Meanwhile Jamal Baptiste has been signed up by Man City no less, for the future. Big up to the Academy, and Moyes, get Divin on the pitch!!!