Declan Rice will not be afraid of facing Enzo Fernandez on Wednesday with West Ham manager David Moyes saying if anything, it will be the other way around.
Chelsea’s Fernandez is the current British transfer record, having cost £105million from Benfica in January. Rice is tipped to break that fee when he leaves West Ham, potentially this summer.
Moyes on Friday revealed he spoke to Benfica boss Roger Schmidt about Fernandez in November, prior to the 2022 World Cup. Asked if that was because he was interested in signing the 22-year-old Argentinian, West Ham’s manager jokingly said: ‘Not when I heard the price I wasn’t!’
Moyes said Rice was relishing Saturday’s lunchtime showdown at the London Stadium and that Fernandez would have been thinking about the midfield battle which will ensue with the 24-year-old Englishman.
‘He might be thinking similar about playing against Dec,’ Moyes said. ‘Dec loves his football. We watch and we talk about all the good players and Enzo Fernandez is an excellent player. He showed it in the World Cup.
‘I knew about him when he was at Benfica. I spoke to the Benfica manager about him in November who’d given him incredible praise about how good of a player he was. So I knew he was on the radar.
‘Obviously the World Cup highlighted what his capabilities were. We try to give the players the information we can about the opposition.
‘The players aren’t daft. They’ll have watched the World Cup and seen recent Premier League games. But it’s quite difficult with Chelsea because they have got so many new players in.’
West Ham will make a late decision on whether to start to Danny Ings, the striker who was an 81st-minute substitute against Newcastle after recovering from his knee injury.
