Laravel 5 defining old input on select

in my controller, I am passing a list of clients to the view

public function edit(Project $project)
{
    $clients = Client::select('clientName', 'id')->get();

    return View::make('projects.edit', compact('project', 'clients'));
}

Now in my view, I am currently doing this

<div class="form-group">
    {!! Form::label('clientName', 'Client Name:', array('class' => 'col-sm-5 control-label blue')) !!}
    <div class="col-sm-7">
        <select class="clientName" name="clientName">
            @foreach($clients as $client)
                @if (Input::old('clients') == $client->id)
                <option value="{{ $client->id }}" selected="selected">{{ $client->clientName }}</option>
                @else
                <option value="{{ $client->id }}">{{ $client->clientName }}</option>
                @endif
            @endforeach
        </select>
    </div>
</div>

What I am trying to do is have the default select option set as the old input. At the moment, the select displays with all the clients, but the old value is not default.

How would I go about making it the default option?

Thanks

via Chebli Mohamed