The Chelsea board have been left red-faced after club icon Jody Morris revealed they nearly sealed a ‘bargain’ £60million deal for Arsenal superstar Declan Rice only a few years ago.
Rice, who came through Chelsea’s academy before being released and going on to make his name at West Ham, has been a standout performer for Arsenal this season and is spearheading their title challenge under Mikel Arteta
The England midfielder was wanted by all the big clubs in Europe in the summer but decided to pick the Emirates Stadium as his new home, joining for a club-record £105m. He had been heavily linked with Chelsea for a number of years, with Frank Lampard said to be the catalyst behind their interest, having fought with his superiors to make a deal happen during his first spell in charge as manager
Jody Morris, who worked as Lampard’s assistant at Chelsea between 2019 and 2021, has now revealed just how close they came to signing Rice for nearly half of the price that Arsenal paid. Speaking on the No Tippy Tappy Podcast, Morris said: “I messaged him when we were there and said, would you come back? Because obviously, he was released from Chelsea as a 14-year-old. If you actually spoke to Dec, I don’t think that he would have thought that he should have been released. But there was quite a few of them that thought maybe he shouldn’t have been released
It’s probably the best thing for him. He’s gone on to amazing things at West Ham. But while he was there, going into the second season I was on at Lamps all the time going, Dec would be unbelievable for us. We need more legs because [N’Golo] Kante hadn’t played for us a lot. He’d only played about 40 percent of the time, he kept getting injured. And I said, would you like Dec? And Lamps said I don’t know, I haven’t really seen enough of him.
