Eni Aluko insists her outlandish claim that Man City helped Arsenal sign Declan Rice was right as she slams 'clowns' for abuse after Gunners agreed £105m deal

• West Ham star is a wanted man
• Interest from City has cooled
• Gunners to break club record

WHAT HAPPENED? The 36-year-old pundit sparked lively debate when telling talkSPORT that Gunners boss Mikel Arteta may have asked close friend Pep Guardiola to drag Manchester City into the bidding for West Ham star Rice in order to get his own board to make the funds available that would allow the 24-year-old to be acquired. Arsenal now have – with City cooling their supposed interest – a club-record £105 million ($133m) deal in place, with Aluko eager to point out that she may have been right all along.

WHAT THEY SAID: Aluko, who has previously worked as the director of women’s football at Aston Villa and as sporting director of NWSL side Angel City FC, has said in a series of social media posts: “Safe to say I suspected Rice wasn't going up the M6 to Manchester! I've had a lot of laughs on this today, it was very quiet from the pile-on brigade – somehow a lot of haters went missing. Apologies are much quieter than disrespect.”

THE BIGGER PICTURE: She added when addressing her trolls directly: “Disagreement is part of the job. But disagreement should never be used by people to be sexist, racist, misogynistic to women in football. It's an absolute disgrace and I won't ignore it for the benefit of a lot of men who project their own jealousy & insecurity spouting abuse. Women in football are not going away. Get used to it.

“We know our stuff, we speak from a place of professional insight and experience. Take it or leave it, agree, disagree but if you choose sexism, racism, misogyny to disagree, you ARE the problem and you're exposing yourself. If you spend your time attacking women in football, you are exposing the fact you can NEVER be at the same level. You're entitled to opinion, don't abuse it to be racist, sexist and misogynistic.”

IN TWO PHOTOS:

Getty/GOAL

WHAT NEXT? Aluko, who earned 102 caps for England and represented Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics, also pointed out that her “DMs are a bit quiet” while going on to say: “Looks like the clowns have run away!”