Thomas Tuchel rates Declan Rice ‘very highly’ because Thomas Tuchel has eyes

With just about a month to go in the season, it’s just about time for the real main event to start gearing up. Enough with this kicking the ball nonsense! We’re talking of course about Silly Season, seemingly the thing that everyone loves most about football, even more so than the football itself. Maybe it’s because everyone gets to be hopeful in the summer still.

Anyway, Chelsea’s unique situation with the sanctions and restrictions and future uncertainties has meant that pre-Silly Season chatter has been rather minimal, and has concerned mostly the potential impending departures of Antonio Rüdiger, Andreas Christensen, and César Azpilicueta. Normally, that would then lead to Big Daddy Roman flinging open the warchest and making some calls, but obviously that’s no longer the situation.

But just in case the new owners wants to imitate Abramovich in that regard, we do have forever target Declan Rice making the rumor rounds once again, thanks to his reported rejection of yet another West Ham contract extension offer. He will be entering the final year last two years of his contract now, and while the Hammers will still want “Bank of England” money (i.e. £100-150m), they may have to start thinking a bit more realistically.

That may or may not help our cause — if he’s to end up at Manchester United, we might as well make sure they vastly overpay — but for what it’s worth, of course Thomas Tuchel would love to have Declan back with his boyhood club as well. I mean, who wouldn’t?!

“[Rate him] very highly. He seems to be a very nice guy from what everybody tells me and is from the Chelsea academy and he proves [this quality]. That’s the most important thing.

“It feels like he plays every single game. He is available, is captain, plays with a lot of responsibility, is a physical player, very strategic-minded player, a key player for his team, and is strong at set-pieces. This is not a surprise. Everybody sees this. He is a huge part of the success of West Ham and it is impressive. [But] maybe [he’s] out of our league [even] if we don’t have our crisis when you hear the numbers that are floating around.

“But as you know, we don’t speak about other players when it comes to whether we are interested or not interested because we take care of the guys that we have here. Our situation gives me a slight advantage that we can’t even think about buying or selling. So there is no need to think about it.”

-Thomas Tuchel; source: Football.London

We don’t have to think about it, this is true.

Just do it.