Chelsea missed out on signing Rice for just £60m despite he was keen on the move

Chelsea missed out on signing Declan Rice for a cut-price fee of just £60million during Frank Lampard's time at the club, former assistant Jody Morris has revealed.

Midfielder Rice infamously joined Arsenal last summer in a staggering £105m move from West Ham and has cemented himself as an integral player under Mikel Arteta.

However, Morris, who acted as Lampard's No 2 throughout his first stint in charge at Stamford Bridge between 2019 and 2021, has claimed Rice was also a Blues target.

With N'Golo Kante suffering from persistent injury issues, Morris raised Rice's name with Lampard, sparking a brief pursuit that ultimately ended in failure.

Speaking on the No Tippy Tappy Football podcast with William Hill, Morris said: 'I messaged him when we were there and said, "would you come back?", because obviously, he was released from Chelsea as a 14-year-old.

'If you actually spoke to Dec, I don't think he thought he should have been released. There were quite a few of them that thought maybe he shouldn't have been released.

'It's probably the best thing for him. He's gone on to amazing things at West Ham. But while he was there, going into the second season I was on at Lamps all the time going, "Dec would be unbelievable for us".

'We need more legs because [N'Golo] Kante hadn't played for us a lot. He'd only played about 40 per cent of the time, he kept getting injured. And I said, "would you like Dec?", and Lamps said, "I don't know, I haven't really seen enough of him".

'About a month later, he was like I've been all over Dec since we've been having a closer look. I messaged Dec saying, "would you come back", otherwise there's no point Lamps going to have the conversations if Dec is still [not wanting to leave].

'And he went, "no,