'IT WORKED'
Ex-England star reveals bizarre theory about Man City’s Declan Rice transfer bid and says ‘I used to do it all the time’
ENI ALUKO has revealed a bizarre theory about the transfer chase to sign Declan Rice - and says she used it all the time.
Manchester City have seen their bid for the star REJECTED by West Ham.
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It comes after the club submitted a £90million offer for the 24-year-old.
The bid from the Treble winners remained £10m shy of West Ham's price tag of £100m.
City's bid was structured as £80m plus £10m in add-ons.
In terms of structure, this had trumped Arsenal's second club record offer of £75m plus £15m in add-ons.
However, SunSport understands the Gunners are planning a third bid in the next 24 hours in an effort to land the England star, who is said to prefer a move to the Emirates.
Now former Lionesses footy star Aluko, who has worked as sporting director at American club Angel City and Aston Villa since quitting playing, has revealed that she believes that City have zero interest in Rice.
And, in fact, she thinks their bid was all due to Pep Guardiola doing his former No.2 a favour - despite Arsenal being City’s nearest challengers to the Premier League title last term.
The 36-year-old former forward, who scored 33 goals in 102 caps for her country, made the revelation on talkSPORT.
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Aluko said: “There’s a lot of cat and mouse here and as a sporting director, I used to do this a lot.
“I used to call up a club and say “right, can you put a bid in” and that would get my owner to basically put a higher bid in. It’s a bit like an auction.
“I don’t think that Manchester City actually want to sign Declan Rice.
“I think what is going on here is that Arteta has picked up the phone to Pep [Guardiola] and said ‘Arsenal are going to do the incremental bid approach, if you put a bid in, then that will push my owner’.
“I think there’s a bit of that going on here.”
Aluko added: “I don’t know why Arsenal are doing this incremental approach but it says to me, Man City coming in later on, it feels like that it is going to help Arsenal.
“The fans are going to get on it now and say ‘hold on a second, if you let Declan Rice go to Man City when he was our No.1 target, then that says a lot about Arsenal.
“So I think there is a bit of that going on. I used to do it all the time and it used to work.”
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