Karren Brady has opened up on Declan Rice leaving West Ham United to join Arsenal in the summer.
Declan Rice left West Ham to sign for Arsenal for £105 million in July – a deal brokered by Karren Brady it seems.
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Hammers boss David Moyes obviously would not have wanted to sell the 24-year-old but in fairness to him, he has replaced him brilliantly.
The Scot signed Edson Alvarez and James Ward-Prowse in the summer transfer window, and we actually look like a better team already.
That’s not to say that Dec isn’t a world-class player because he obviously is, but the West Ham players are no longer overly-reliant on him and we are more of a team.
Brady has outlined how much she, and the rest of the Hammers board, tried to keep him at the London Stadium though…
‘Unrequited love’: Karren Brady says player was desperate to leave West Ham
The Hammers vice-chairman was a guest on talkSPORT yesterday afternoon.
And Brady responded when asked about the deal to sell Rice to Arsenal in the summer:
“My job was to do the deal, we did not want to sell him. He made a decision that he wanted to go, and then my job was to get the best possible price for him. We tried everything to convince him to stay and had been speaking to his father for about two years. We tried to build a team around him. He was a special player and actually a gentleman. It was a kind of unrequited love. He wanted to see out his career outside of West Ham.”
At the end of the day, £105 million for Declan Rice was a sensational deal for the Hammers.
And the way that Moyes has replaced the 24-year-old makes it an even better one.
I think we’ll make genuine progress this year after Rice’s exit, and not many people predicted that when we sold him.
Karren Brady gets so much criticism from the West Ham fans, but she deserves huge credit for getting an exceptional deal for the club by selling Rice for £105 million.
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