Mark Noble has claimed live on TalkSPORT there’s still hope within the club Declan Rice won’t leave West Ham.
Over the last few seasons, there have been reports and murmurings about Rice’s future and when or if he will indeed leave West Ham, which has become increasingly inevitable given he rejected a bumper new contract earlier this year.
The midfielder has attracted interest from a whole host of clubs including Chelsea and Manchester United, and with the Hammers struggling in the league and not going to be challenging for Europe, that could well force him to look for a transfer.
However, Sporting Director, Mark Noble, insists that there is indeed still a bit of hope within himself that Rice will look to stay with the Hammers.
Will Rice leave next summer?
Yes!
No!
(0:55) “When you sign players like Lucas Paqueta and Gianluca Scamacca there is hope that you can keep hold of your best players and with Declan [Rice] I think he’s got two years left on his contract, we’d all hope that we can keep hold of him but I think he’s going to be sought after by obviously some of the top clubs not only in this country but the world.”
TIF Thoughts on Rice’s future…
There may well have been an increased amount of optimism over the last few seasons about Rice’s future because West Ham had been regularly qualifying for Europe, however, they are currently fighting against relegation which won’t be keeping Rice happy.
However, the writing may well have been on the wall since the start of the year when Rice rejected a rather ambitious eight-year contract from West Ham. which would have likely locked him into the club for the majority of his career.
While Noble admits there is hope about keeping Rice, the fact he now has just two years left on his deal means a serious conversation has to be made about his future as the Hammers don’t want to get into a scenario where he’d be able to leave for free having run down his contract.