Month: March 2021

Moyes makes £100m Rice claim amid Chelsea, Man Utd links

David Moyes says West Ham star Declan Rice is ‘worth far more than £100million’ amid links with Chelsea and Man Utd.

The England international has been a stalwart in midfield for the Hammers this season.

His performances alongside Tomas Soucek have helped them to challenge for a Champions League spot.

READ: West Ham skipper Noble agrees one-year contract extension

However, they’ve also attracted interest from some of the Premier League’s top clubs.

Chelsea officials supposedly want him to partner N’Golo Kante at Stamford Bridge.

Red Devils boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is also a big admirer.

Ahead of their clash with Leeds United, Moyes was asked about Rice’s future at West Ham.

The manager told Sky Sports: “I don’t agree with the owners that Declan Rice is a £100million footballer. Far, far more than £100m. Far more.

“I look at the players who have joined some clubs from overseas and come in and nowhere near had the impact Declan Rice would have.

“I certainly wouldn’t put a price on it. You can decide which figure you want to put on it but I wouldn’t be sanctioning anything like that, that’s for sure.”

West Ham will need to see off competition from Everton, Spurs and Chelsea for a top four place.

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Moyes was also asked if West Ham would need Champions League football to keep Rice.

He responded: “No, because Declan is under contract first and foremost, so he can’t go anywhere no matter what, and I keep saying it and I hope people know that when I say something, I mean it.

“We’ve not had an offer for Declan Rice and I hope we don’t get one. And you’ve got an idea now of where we’d need to be if it was even going to be considered, certainly by me.

“If we could finish in Europe, in some sort of European position, I think it would be progress. And that would be progress for Declan Rice as well because he’s been at West Ham while they’ve been bobbing around the bottom, so this is new for Declan as well.

“Declan seems very settled and in fact he is captaining West Ham, he plays for England, and I want to keep Declan thinking that his ambitions can be achieved here at West Ham. I will have to keep pushing that and keep pushing that with the owners as well.

“For me, I have watched the prices of some players who have gone to clubs recently and they could not lace Declan Rice’s boots.”


Mercedes reckons budget cap could deliver ‘performance advantage’

Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff says the introduction this year of a budget cap in F1 has forced the championship winning team to rethink how it operates, a change that could deliver a performance advantage according to the Austrian.

As F1 aims to eventually level its playing field, teams are facing a mandatory $145m cost cap this season, a threshold that will drop incrementally to $135 million by the start of 2023.

The financial change is providing various challenges across the field depending on the magnitude of the budget scale-backs, which are logically significant for front-running outfits such as Mercedes, Red Bull or Ferrari.

©Mercedes

Mercedes tech boss James Allison recently said that adapting to F1’s new budgets constraints has been a “huge” challenge for the Brackley squad. But Wolff believes it’s is an objective that could ultimately provide the team with an edge.

“You need to trim how you operate, but we believe this is a performance advantage because it has obliged us to rethink what we do and how we do it,” he said.

“There’s more emphasis and focus on the areas we believe bring the best performance.

“For us, prioritising has always been key to how we function. Rather than trying to do A and B, we have always approached with A or B because you simply put more emphasis on what you think will bring you more performance.

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“But the cost cap has brought that to a new level because we were not operating before within a regulatory cost constraint.”

    Read also: Cost cap ‘could take years’ to make real difference – Monchaux

Obviously, no team operates according to an open budget where funds can be spent without limit or justification. But Wolff says the cost cap is now more precisely factored into a team’s management.

“Obviously in the real world there was always a budget limit, but now you need to be precisely within those limits.

“That means you need to understand your processes. Every single item [needs to be] cost-evaluated.”

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