West Ham midfielder Rice hails impact of teammates Lingard, Soucek: They're just so good | OneFootball

West Ham midfielder Declan Rice has hailed the impact of teammates Tomas Soucek and Jesse Lingard.

Rice declared difference maker Jesse Lingard as a "top, top player" following the on-loan Manchester United midfielder's starring contribution in West Ham's 2-1 win over Tottenham on Sunday.

"I knew this when I played with him at England, he's a top, top player," Rice told talkSPORT.

"When you give him the ball on the pitch you know he'll do something with it. He's also got a great personality and the lads have taken to him really well. Hopefully he's still here next season!"

Lingard's pied piper celebration got its first outing in West Ham colours on Sunday against Tottenham and Rice explained how the plan was hatched to get in on the act moments before leaving the dressing room.

"We were in training on Friday and playing a game called 'the D', where the keeper plays the ball out to the D on the edge of the box and you've got two touches before trying to score," Rice explained.

"Pablo [Fornals] kept scoring and obviously Jesse was there, and Pablo kept doing the celebration Jesse has done in the past [his piper dance] and everybody was having a bit of a laugh and banter.

"Before the game yesterday Pablo was like, 'right, if we score today Jesse you do that, I'll be on the guitar', and I said I wanted to be on the drums! Literally it was just made up before the game, we just had a little giggle about it, and luckily enough Jesse scored and it call came off."

Czech Republic international Soucek has been one of the most in-form players in the Premier League, scoring eight goals from a deep midfield role this term.

"He's so good," Rice mused. "I played against him for England with Czech Republic but now to have him next to me, it's great.

"He does everything you want a midfielder to do. Even away at Man United in the FA Cup, two days later we came in and saw he'd ran 17km in the game. All the lads were like 'that's not normal, Tom!'."