The England midfielder’s price tag was gazumped by Caicedo (Pictures: Sky Sports / Getty)
Arsenal star Declan Rice has poked fun at the fact he has already lost his title as the Premier League’s most expensive player of the summer following Chelsea’s £115million deal for Moises Caicedo.
The Gunners agreed a £105m deal with West Ham for the England international just over a month ago, with the fee representing a club-record deal while the total package will exceed the British-record £100m Manchester City spent on Jack Grealish if various add-ons are achieved.
But, having already spent £107m on Enzo Fernandez in January, Chelsea one-upped Arsenal by finally prising Caicedo away from Brighton last week, beating off competition from Liverpool to secure a £115m deal – which sets a new Premier League transfer record.
Rice, who gave an excellent display as 10-man Arsenal beat Crystal Palace 1-0 on Monday night, has already seen his mammoth transfer fee put in the shade by Caicedo but he can see the funny side.
When the Ecuadorian’s record move – which eclipsed his own price tag – was brought up, Rice burst out laughing and told Sky Sports: ‘I had it up on the wall for two weeks! It’s come down already!’
While Caicedo had a horror debut, giving away a late penalty against Rice’s old club West Ham on Sunday, the England star was in fine form at Selhurst Park and says he was partly motivated by a desire to show he was worth the money Arsenal paid.
He continued: ‘Before the game tonight, I was on the way to the game and I just thought, “Just go out there and have it tonight, try and put on a show”.
Rice delivered an excellent performance against Crystal Palace (Picture: Getty)
‘Even in the warm up I just felt an energy that I wanted to go out there and perform. I was just really up for it, to be honest with you.
‘Only two games in, obviously there’s so much talk about the price tag and me playing for Arsenal, and I want to keep proving people wrong, keep proving that I can play at the top and keep putting in top performances.
‘So I’ll keep my feet on the ground, keep listening to everyone around me, and keep pushing.’
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On the result against Palace, he added: ‘If you want to be up at the top at the end of the season you have to show character and pluck out three points.
‘I think it was a massive relief to get through them 20 minutes, we know what it is like at Selhurst Park and we controlled the game completely until we went down to 10 men – we put our body on the line to get the three points.’
Manager Mikel Arteta was full of praise for Rice, saying: ‘He was fantastic today he dominated the game we asked him to do something new and he was fantastic.’
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‘It’s come down already!’