Journalist Sam Lee has revealed details regarding Manchester City’s interest in signing Declan Rice.
Earlier this week, it was reported that after seeing a £90m bid for the West Ham United midfielder get rejected, the Citizens pulled out of the race to sign him.
Since then, Arsenal have agreed a deal with the Hammers worth an overall fee of £105m.
Now, one journalist has shared some behind-the-scenes details concerning the Manchester club’s position on the Englishman and what their thinking is now that they have walked away from this particular deal.
City not desperate to sign Rice alternative
Speaking on a recent edition of the Let Me Talk podcast, Lee said this when discussing the topic of City’s interest in Rice and what the reaction is following their departure from the race.
He said: “In terms of how that day developed, I was asking around like, ‘what’s the plan?’ And then the information I got was, there’s no real alternative to Rice that as far as my guy knew, it was more that they really liked Rice, rather than they were desperate to get a midfielder.
“And so it’s not like they’re thinking, ‘oh God, we need to go and get somebody else,’ because if there’s nobody else that they really, really like, like they liked Rice, then they don’t need to push it.”
With the club not being particularly desperate to bring in a new midfielder following the arrival of Mateo Kovacic from Chelsea, this could be why they were willing to walk away from securing a potential deal for the West Ham star rather than increase their initial offer for him.
In terms of other potential transfer targets the European champions have been linked with in this window, they have reportedly agreed personal terms with RB Leipzig defender, Josko Gvardiol, but may have to splash out a significant transfer fee to land a deal for him.
Moving forward, it will be interesting to see if the Manchester club do end up seeing any changes being made to their midfield after walking away from signing the Hammers captain.
