Seven games were enough for the former West Ham player to conquer Arsenal.
Around the hour mark of Arsenal-Manchester City, Stefan Ortega throws a long ball which is headed by Gabriel; Bernardo Silva arrives on it, who controls it in the defensive midfield and uses the space in front of him to lead. The Portuguese doesn’t have time to cross the midfield circle Declan Rice he appears in the frame with the stride of a four hundred runner and makes up for all the meters of delay he had accumulated, passing in front of him and leaving with the ball between his feet, while behind him Bernardo had attempted, in vain, a slide to try to regain it.
Rice’s recovery is aesthetically satisfying for the way in which it is achieved, with a violent athletic superiority but at the same time elegant for how he slips the ball from Bernardo’s feet without even having to waste the slightest strength in any physical impact. A now classic play at the Rice, in which the stride projects the opponents onto an imaginary treadmill with a cruising speed significantly lower than that of the former West Ham. At the same time, it is a recovery with relative specific weight: City, after a complex first half that could have closed behind, had already begun to regain control of the game, sublimating it with Cole Palmer’s goal a few minutes later. Arsenal’s second half was unconvincing but, as will happen in subsequent matches, Rice had seemed one of the few unable to mentally exit the game.
Rice played the Community Shield with the red shirt instead of the blue one, a factor that is not negligible either on a technical or, even less, symbolic level. Arsenal, in order not to give in on another transfer target – before him they had seen Martínez and Mudryk removed from United and Chelsea – wanted to make Rice the most expensive English player ever and this says a lot about the intentions of the Gunners. Although 105 million is a huge amount even for one big sixwhich has elite spending powers Also compared to the elite, with Rice Arsenal have wanted – and, to a certain extent, due – flex your muscles also on an economic level.
The Premier League’s domestic market has taken on increasingly dystopian turns, with figures that seem to grow without limit, it must be said. Nonetheless, it is still worth noting that, in this ecosystem, the price invested for Rice does not appear Like this off the charts: together with Moises Caicedo, 41 was the best midfielder on the market, whose status was never understood just because he was confined to a second-tier team. Even at the cost of ignoring his 24 years of age and having lifted West Ham’s first European trophy in almost fifty years as captain.
Manchester City, the only team capable of fielding a player stronger than him in his role, tried in any case to sign him: a clear affront, not only to Arsenal, who followed him for months, willing to put crazy figures, as for the whole Premier League. The offer of almost 90 million pounds seemed like the manifesto of a team that, in addition to having won repeatedly, also wanted to dominate the domestic market as Juve and Bayern have done in recent years in Italy and Germany.
Rice therefore joined Arsenal as a manifesto of rebellion against the technical and economic hegemony of Manchester City. The first six games have demonstrated both the ambition in wanting to succeed and the intelligence in forcing this move. In the first Premier League match, against Nottingham Forest, Arteta tried to experiment, moving Thomas Partey to the role of false full-back. Rice, therefore, started in an extremely fluid role in the rhombus with Havertz, Ødegaard and Thomas himselfacting as the top, bottom or left vertex as needed.
Having a midfielder of Thomas’s level in the squad, Rice could have occupied a more advanced role on the pitch from day 1, based on a belief – justified by his international appearances – that his talent is not only that of a formidable rebounder balls but, also and above all, of a player capable of participating in the maneuver in advanced areas. Declan Rice, for Arteta, can be an heir to Granit Xhaka: a player who arrived as a playmaker and then migrated into the middle space, used to offer banks and insertions into the area, potentially capable of reaching double figures. The 24-year-old from London, apparently a one-and-done low top, is in reality fully attributable to Arsenal’s transfer strategy, aimed at adding flexible players on the pitch; he, Kai Havertz (centre forward and midfielder) e Jurriën Timber (before the cruciate injury, already oscillating between the central and the false full-back).
Rice therefore played the first two official matches as a nominal left midfielder but, unlike Xhaka, he alternated positions with his teammates in the central flank, exchanging positions, as mentioned, with Thomas and Havertz rather than with Zinchenko and Martinelli. At the same time, he found himself climbing alongside Partey, recreating a second line pairing similar to the one the Ghanaian created with Zinchenko last season.
Rice’s match against Forest was a natural continuation of what we had seen against Manchester City: a match of personality from a player capable of adapting without problems to a more competitive and demanding context. The former West Ham player left the field with 104 touched balls, 84 successful passes out of 91, 6 duels won and 3 shots on target, two of which turned into formidable saves by Matt Turner.
Arteta has already given ample proof that he wants to maintain a tactically flexible team. Against Crystal Palace, Rice was moved more decisively into the central flank, bringing Havertz to the left flank and leaving Thomas to his right. The idea was to strengthen the right chain: on that side of the pitch would be Palace’s area of greatest impact, made up of Mitchell, Schlupp and, above all, Eze.
Unfortunately for Arsenal, the possibility of changing the position of the two midfielders was aborted almost immediately: Thomas Partey was injured before the match against United at the beginning of September, remaining out for over a month. Despite not having any counter-proof, it is, however, easy to believe that Arteta still prefers to use the former West Ham player in the lower management role, even if only based on the fact that he also started in that role in the derby against Fulham, in which Thomas it was still available.
How can you blame the Basque: in the top 5 of the Premier League, Rice maintained an average of 77 attempted passes with 92% success, a figure clearly higher than that achieved by Thomas last season (60 attempted, 88% accuracy) and which realistically it will remain so even when the racing sample, as is natural, begins to expand. Rice’s contribution can also be felt in management: the Englishman manages to progress with the ball with greater continuityleveraging a slender physical structure, a light stride and better technical means than those of the Ghanaian.
Rice seems to have a style more consistent with that of Arteta even when not in possession. This shouldn’t be too surprising: Rice is a more refined interdictor than Thomas, less oriented towards individual duels and more towards reading space to shorten and anticipate opponents. Arteta himself, after the match against Palace, described Rice’s performance as “dominant” and, in fact, what is most striking about Rice’s matches is the sense of dominance that the Englishman transmits on the pitch; he is not (anymore) just a ball retriever like few in Europe, he is (also) a midfielder who wants to have the ball and circulate it, who wants to direct the pace of the match and who often succeeds well. His purchase brought a upgrade easily perceptible to Arteta’s midfieldmanaging to raise the level even compared to Thomas Partey, last season among the best in the Premier League in the role.
If you need to locate one statement game by Declan Rice this season, however, that was the match against Manchester United: paired with Zinchenko for the first time, he replaced Thomas Partey in all and for all. With the Ukrainian, Rice immediately found himself at ease, reconstituting the first structure that characterized Arsenal last season.
Rice’s inclusion in this system was immediate, both when he had Zinchenko alongside him on the second line and when he found himself playing as lone six, with Havertz and Ødegaard alternating in supporting him, he always knew what to do. The late goal, which objectively only existed thanks to Evans’ deflection, further emphasized the value of Rice’s game, which covered the entire pitch and distilled intelligent plays and interventions which in themselves would be worth a place in the highlightslike the heel slide with which he broke Lindelöf’s lead in the first half.
However, the former West Ham player gave Arsenal something further: not just a technical or tactical contribution, but also a character one. Despite just turning 24, Rice brought a leadership and charisma that it was not obvious he could bring to a team with Arsenal’s ambitions. Already in the match against Forest, in the traditional huddle before kick-off, he was seen cheering on his teammates before Ødegaard took the floor; on the pitch his presence was evident in the way he speaks to his teammates, indicates movements and passing lines and puts himself in first-person vision to receive the ball.
At West Ham the armband was on his arm for just a year – the one between Mark Noble’s retirement and his transfer to Arsenal – but his leadership was already widely recognized by his teammates. Noble himself told the BBC that he felt lifted up by the fact that it was Rice who succeeded him as captain. Noble again, after the sale, added that he sees Rice well as a possible Arsenal captain, a hypothesis also feared by none other than Wayne Rooney. It’s hard to expect Rice to become, however Truly Arteta’s captaincy – Ødegaard’s renewal until 2028 seems to be confirmation of this – but the Basque coach has always shown that he appreciates charismatic figures in his dressing room, so much so that he chose Gabriel Jesus as the Norwegian’s deputy just a few weeks after his purchase from City .
If therefore, at the time of the announcement, the purchase of Declan Rice might have seemed like a crazy move for the public, his first seven games were a first litmus test for those who, rightly, claimed the opposite.
2023-09-25 08:00:00
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