Karren Brady has admitted that West Ham United didn’t want to sell Declan Rice, but the player ended up forcing his move to Arsenal.

Declan Rice completed a big-money move to Arsenal over the summer, but West Ham United vice-chairman Karren Brady insists the club didn’t want to sell him.

“My job was to sell him,” Brady said. “We did not want to sell him, he made a decision that he wanted to go.

“Having made that decision, my job was to get the best possible price for him, so the club could go back in again and make every penny of that count and I think that’s exactly what we did.

“It’s very difficult when a player doesn’t want to stay, I mean we tried everything we could to convince him to stay. In terms of the contract, we had been speaking to his father for about two years.

“We tried to build a team around him, he’s a special player and a gentleman, a very nice young man to have around and a great captain.”

West Ham ended up securing a £105m deal for Rice, inclusive of add-ons, which is Arsenal’s record transfer fee.

The Hammers reinvested that money in the transfer market, and they seem to have come out the other side with a strong squad ready to build on last season’s Europa Conference League win.

Despite that European success, West Ham struggled all year in the Premier League in 2022/23, but they’ve shot up into the top four in the very early stages of the current campaign.

Yet Arsenal will also be very pleased with the deal they did.

Rice won the official Man of the Match award and scored a 96th-minute go-ahead goal against Manchester United on Sunday, also picking up the Player of the Match award in the Arsenal fan vote.

The midfielder has been impressive in Arsenal’s unbeaten start to the campaign, and he already has his first silverware with the Community Shield.

Despite spending all that money, it’s hard to find anyone complaining about the cost of the transfer.