West Ham won’t let Declan Rice leave without a fight — reports

Clarifying the earlier rumors about West Ham willing to let their star players leave in the next transfer window as long as their respective valuations were met, reports today from The Guardian and Goal are claiming that Declan Rice is pretty much the last person West Ham would sell at this point (unless they get relegated).

The Hammers would let the likes of Carlos Sánchez, Pablo Zabaleta, Andriy Yarmolenko, and Felipe Anderson depart before even entertaining a bid for Rice and at this point. It looks like Chelsea could be priced out of a deal (alongside everyone else if there’s any truth to the £70m figures cited).

While it was rumored that Chelsea might use Ross Barkley (or Michy Batshuayi) as a make-weight for the deal, it West Ham would rather forego signing Barkley than losing Rice. (Ed.note: not exactly a tough choice, that.) Barkley meanwhile appears quite content with continuing at Chelsea for the time being.

Declan Rice didn’t seem like the biggest need to add to Chelsea at the moment, and given all these complications and potential sources of a transfer-saga, it’s probably best to spend our monies elsewhere.

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