Declan Rice ready to quit West Ham United in 2023 as new information emerges
Declan Rice is “keen to leave” West Ham in 2023 as he looks to move to a team that is competing for trophies and playing at the highest level, says Simon Phillips.
Rice has been linked with an exit for several years, but it’s believed that the club is open to selling him in 2023 for the first time with Chelsea already in talks and Liverpool also showing a strong interest in a deal.
But now Phillips has taken things a step further, sharing on his official Substack (27 November) that Rice wants to leave in the summer with West Ham encouraging a bidding war to get the best possible price for him.
“I’m also still being told that if given the option, Rice would pick Chelsea over any other club,” he wrote.
“However, the situation is that West Ham are going to encourage a bidding war for Rice in order to get the very best fee for him come the summer, which is entirely natural.
“Rice is keen to leave West Ham this summer and he wants to join a progressive club challenging for trophies.
“He’s at a stage in his career when he is ready to move to a new club now and wants to win trophies.
“So for me, as much as he would love to join Chelsea, it isn’t Chelsea or nothing. Other clubs have a genuine interest, and the race has been described as still ‘being pretty open’ by sources, even though they feel it is Chelsea who still have the best chance.”
Wants out
West Ham fans have always known that Rice would leave eventually, and the hope has always been that he’d go abroad and we’d get a huge fee in return.
But the longer the saga goes on it’s clear that he’s going to end up in another Premier League club and the fee is constantly decreasing as time on his contract runs down.
If Rice really does want out, then it explains why he hasn’t been his usual influential self this season and why performances have struggled in comparison to recent years.
Something has looked off with Rice for a while now and it’s starting to become clear that his head has turned and his focus may be elsewhere, not entirely on West Ham, with the World Cup and now a potential move away.
It’s likely to be an acrimonious divorce between Rice and the club in the summer, but hopefully he can fully switch on after Qatar and push us up the table to leave on some sort of high.