You do know how this works, right? Rice doesn't have the chance to speak to City because we haven't put a bid in. And we haven't put a bid in, possibly because West Ham want more money than we're willing to pay or because Arsenal value him higher (or maybe we're not interested at all and don't think he'd fit into our system). What people are saying is if we matched Arsenal's bid and gave the player a straight choice, he'd pick us every time, because we're his best chance of silverware. Similarly, if Barcelona had matched our offer for Aguero in 2011, he probably wouldn't have become a City player. But they didn't, so he was.