Rice remains vital to West Ham's future

Some worrying press reports that Chelsea are trying to prise Declan Rice away from West Ham, Deckers started out at Chelsea and is best friends with Mason Mount. There seem to be some mixed messages coming out the club, with the Guardian saying that Moyes wants to build a team around Declan, although the Evening Standard reports that, "It is understood an offer of £70million would be acceptable and hard to turn down, although few clubs may be able to meet that price in a post-virus market."

For all the financial problems of Covid-19 there are plenty of savings to be made elsewhere. Pablo Zabaleta and the 65k-a-week Carlos Sanchez are out of contract in June. With three number tens in the squad there is a case for selling one of Anderson, Fornals or Lanzini. Yarmolenko must also be likely to depart and, if anyone will have them, Ajeti and Wilshere could go too. 

It's true that every player has his price and that after selling Wayne Rooney at Everton Moyes managed to use the money to sign the likes of Cahill, Arteta, Coleman, Pienaar, Jagielka and Lescott, who all did very well for him. But there's no guarantee Moyes would be able to do that again and the reason for moving to the London Stadium wasn't to sell our best players. If Declan demands to leave it would be unwise to keep an unhappy player; but until he does we have to build a side around this immensely talented young man.