Declan Rice transfer clause Arsenal may regret amid West Ham Premier League title race incentive

Arsenal go into the final few weeks of the season knowing that the title race is out of their hands and that they are reliant on Manchester City to drop points in the remaining four games they have left to play. Pep Guardiola knows that wins over Wolves, Fulham, Tottenham and West Ham will win them the title.

Meanwhile, the Gunners have just three games left and likely have to win all three to have any hope of lifting a title for the first time in twenty years. However, the final game of City’s campaign, at home to the Hammers, has been speculated about by some Arsenal fans as having an additional incentive for the visitors.

As the season comes to a close, teams in mid-table have very little to fight for as European places become impossible to reach whilst the threat of relegation has been avoided. West Ham currently sit eighth in the table, four points off seventh which will become a UEFA Europa Conference League qualification spot.

The likelihood is that David Moyes' side will indeed have nothing to play for competitively come this game. He is a former coach of Mikel Arteta and perhaps would prefer his old player won instead of the juggernaut that is City but we will have to wait maybe until his last pre-match press conference to find out.

What Arsenal might now regret, however is the structure of the deal which brought Declan Rice to the club in the summer. The Gunners agreed a £105million package with West Ham to sign Rice after lengthy negotiations which would start considerably below the final price.

£5million of the final price would be in add-ons, paid depending upon certain criteria that Rice would have to fulfil with Arsenal for West Ham to get the money. Whereas it is understood the £100million is paid in two instalments over 24 months.

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Sky’s Kaveh Solhekol revealed in July of last year though that the add-ons had nothing to do with a Premier League title success for Arsenal. Instead, should Rice play 60% of the games during a UEFA Champions League campaign over five years, each season West Ham would get an additional £1million.

football.london reported in the summer of last year that West Ham wanted only an achievable add-on structure involved in the price tag for Rice. This therefore did not include anything related to a title win with doubts over whether Arsenal would do such a thing whilst Man City continued to dominate the league.

It appears that one year on, that might not have been the case with Arsenal very much in the race. However, the reality is that there exists no monetary incentive from the Rice deal to push West Ham to try any harder than they would have anyway against City on the final day of the season.