Gareth Southgate angers West Ham fans with Declan Rice comments | OneFootball

Gareth Southgate has angered West Ham United supporters by praising Declan Rice, following a strong performance from the midfielder on Saturday.

England didn’t put in their best performance against Brazil on Saturday, losing 1-0 in a friendly at Wembley, but Declan Rice was impressive on an individual basis.

After the game, Gareth Southgate singled out the midfielder for praise, suggesting the 25-year-old’s game has reached a new level.

“I thought Declan [Rice] was outstanding, throughout the game,” Southgate said. “With and without the ball.

“[He] showed the next step that he has gone to. He’s a crucial player for us anyway, but he looked totally at home in that sort of environment.

“We’re short of a few, we don’t have a lot of midfield players playing as sixes in the league.”

It’s hard to see anything too objectionable in those quotes. Anyone who watched the game would agree that Rice was very good, and that he didn’t look intimidated by the opposition or the circumstances.

Nor is it unfair to say that the Premier League lacks English players capable of playing that role to anything like the same standard as Rice. He’s in a bit of a world of his own on that one.

Yet West Ham fans were angered by the comments all the same.

Damien Charles Lucas of Hammers News wrote that the comments amount to “disrespect” to West Ham, calling the quotes “lazy” and a display of Southgate’s “clear bias”.

Lucas claims it’s “simply not true that [Rice’s] game has developed that significantly since leaving West Ham”.

Meanwhile, on West Ham fan site Claret & Hugh, another fan wrote that Southgate’s comments were “mildly insulting and certainly inaccurate”.

The writer claimed: “Despite Southgate’s gushing praise, I’ve seen Rice play much better for West Ham.”

One thing’s for sure, those fans have certainly seen Rice at his best against West Ham.

Perhaps the midfielder’s goal and two assists in a Player of the Match display in February, as Arsenal thrashed the Hammers 6-0, is still a bit of a sore point.